Dreams 101: User Manual For Dummies
by HadenXCharm
Summary: Ikkaku had been living in dreams for a year now, confusing illusion and reality. He could ford a sea, he could climb a mountain, he could castle-crash and kiss a princess, he could resist the forbidden fruit. He'd learned a million different ways to twist dreams they way he wanted them, but the one thing he still hadn't figured out, was how to wake up. Yumi/Ikka, Shu/Izu, Ren/Ichi
1. Chapter 1

**AN** -

Dreams-AU - Alice-in-wonderland-esque dream world. It's hard to explain in one word.  
Pairings \- Yumichika/Ikkaku, side hints of Kira/Hisagi, Ichimaru/Matsumoto, and Ichigo/Renji  
Setting \- After Aizen's war, in Seireitei.  
Rating \- T (For language and sexual dialougue) may change to M.  
Genre \- Romance/Humor/Horror/'crackfic?'

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Dreams 101 - Chapter 1: How not to ask someone on a date

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It all started with those stupid dreams. They were driving him absolutely crazy; Crazy enough that he was thinking about cracking his head open on the cement like an egg just so he didn't have to be so fucking confused anymore.

Of course, Madarame Ikkaku of the legendary tsuki-tsuki dance was _far_ too lucky to have an accidental fall and an open-head injury that didn't involve a fight. So if he didn't purposefully do it, it just wasn't gonna' happen. Story of his life.

These were dumb confusing dreams, vivid lucid ones that he'd never seen the likes of before, dreams that made him question his own strength and intelligence when he woke up. They were slowly driving him nuts, and soon he was sure that he would get into a serious fix in one of them, and he would no longer be able to wake up to escape it. They were starting to interfere with his work – he was losing his focus and was constantly sleepy. What's more was that his heart was starting to cause him problems again. No, not his physical heart. His _feelings._

He'd tried to ask Yumichika out but had fucked it all up when he'd changed his mind at the last second and ended up saying something dumb. They'd gotten into a fight, and that was around the time the dreams had started. That had been almost a year ago.

At the present moment, Ikkaku wasn't irritated or confused by any of these events, because he was dreaming right then – _again_.

Just like in every other dream, it began with a sense of normalcy. It was these usual surroundings and situations that kept Ikkaku from realizing he was asleep right away. As things got stranger and as Yumichika appeared (and he always did), Ikkaku would, of course, come upon the revelation that he was dreaming and that he could not wake up.

However, at the moment, he still didn't know it, and was wiping his eyes as he got up from his bed. He grumbled and scratched his stomach just like always, and just like always he yawned and stretched his arms. Just like always he'd turn around to see if Yumichika was awake, and then-

Ikkaku blinked. Yumichika wasn't in his bed. Yumichika's futon was empty, and it looked like it hadn't been slept in at all last night. For some reason, he had the automatic knowledge that Yumichika was up and about looking for his lost hairbrush.

It didn't occur to him why he knew this fact; he just did, and that was fine with him. He washed his face in the bathroom sink, did some stretches and a few push-ups, but suddenly his morning routine was interrupted by a shriek and a horrible rattling noise. He rushed back into the bedroom, looking for the source.

This was where things began to get out of the ordinary. Still, it didn't quite register to his dream-mind that this shouldn't be happening.

Hozukimaru was shuddering on its sword stand, rattling itself out of its sheath, screaming and crying. Ikkaku went over and grabbed it, put it back in its sheath, and told it to go to sleep. Hozukimaru often had nightmares, ones that Ikkaku had shared in the past – horrible, ridiculously gory, disturbing dreams of battle and villages being ransacked and torched.

Yumichika's sword was missing from its rung underneath his. What was strange about it was that the sheath was still there, but the sword was gone. Perhaps Yumichika had already gone to work. That didn't sit too well with Ikkaku for some reason, because it really seemed as though Yumichika hadn't even come home last night. Besides, he had no idea why Yumichika would decide to leave his sword's scabbard behind.

Ikkaku briefly wondered where Yumichika was and whether he'd made progress on his hair-brush hunt, when he heard a noise somewhere inside the house. Maybe Yumichika had already found it and was making breakfast for them.

After milling around for a few minutes, Ikkaku decided he would go to the kitchen to ask about the sword sheath, but as he left his bedroom, he was suddenly in the Captain's office. This, in his dream-state, did not seem out of the ordinary and didn't cause him alarm or even amazement.

What _was_ out of the ordinary to him, was that the Captain wasn't in the office; Someone else was. Standing in the center of the room – though he hadn't the slightest idea _why –_ was Hisagi Shuuhei, holding some bright purple underpants to his face and smelling them with a perverted look on his face. Again, Ikkaku came upon a sudden piece of knowledge that he wouldn't normally be privy to: those were _Yumichika's _underwear.

All of a sudden, he got really inexplicably angry, so mad that he couldn't even freaking _see_ straight, which was strange, because if he were awake in this situation, he'd probably just raise an eyebrow at the display and then leave the room. That was another awful side-effect of these stupid dreams. He was starting to reawaken his long-buried feelings for a certain someone, and he was afraid that lack of peaceful sleep was going to cause him to let something slip during the day.

These dreams were a slow-boiling torture, and they had been going on every night without fail for almost a year now.

But Ikkaku still wasn't aware of that at the moment – he didn't even know he was asleep yet. It didn't occur to him that being angry was strange, or even that the surroundings were illogical given that he'd just been in his house.

On top of that, it wasn't like he'd seen Yumichika's underpants enough times to be able to identify them. He didn't study their laundry enough to know that they were his – he just knew that they were Yumichika's, that Hisagi was holding them, and that he was probably fixing to steal them once he was done smelling the detergent like some pervert.

"Gimme that!" he shouted. Hisagi's eyes popped open in shock at his sudden fury.

"No!" Hisagi shouted back. Hisagi's personality was always seriously warped in his dreams. He either acted like some overgrown-six year old, was overly dramatic or serious, starry-eyed over Muguruma Kensei, or was extremely stressed out and in a hurry to get to somewhere.

When Ikkaku was awake, trying to dissect these weird dreams, he figured it was because he couldn't take Hisagi seriously in real life, so he _definitely_ wouldn't be able to in dreams.

"No!" Hisagi yelled again, stomping his feet and holding the underpants out of Ikkaku's reach even though Ikkaku hadn't tried to grab them yet. "No, they're mine!"

"There's no way those are yours! They're too small for you!" Ikkaku said this, feeling that it was a good argument at the time, but thought better of it once he'd said it aloud. His hands were in fists ready to wring Hisagi's neck and swipe the flamboyant piece of clothing back.

"Yumichika would kill you if he knew you'd snooped in his laundry!" He paused, frowning to himself. He had a feeling that Yumichika should be here, and the fact that he wasn't was bothering him all of a sudden. "Where is he, come to think of it?"

All of a sudden, there came a sudden puff of glitter from his left shoulder.

He looked over, and that was when it hit him that he was dreaming this _again_, because he'd been having creepy recurring dreams like this _every single night_. They always included Yumichika, cute, little, doll-sized Yumichika, who was his voice of reason and wisdom when it came to telling him how to escape his dream prison.

However, Yumichika in his dreams was just as sassy and bratty as he was in real life - Ikkaku found it endearing when he was awake, because he enjoyed bickering, but it was downright frustrating when he was here in his dream world. Yumichika was often too stuck-up to tell him how to get out most of the time.

More often, Yumichika told him how to deal with the other delusional people milling around in his dream-scape. Even more often than that, Yumichika was usually preoccupied with finding something or someone, or doing some task that was impossible given his small size, _something_ that made him too busy to tell Ikkaku how to get out of there.

When Ikkaku was awake - and brave enough to think about all this-, he figured that Yumichika was his guide because - as much as he tried to deny it - Yumichika was the brains of their partnership. Yumichika was the one with restraint, caution, and common-sense. However, this didn't give him any hints as to why Yumichika was always so little.

He had _no_ idea why, and it bothered him, because it was probably something important and colossal that dominated his actual life, something he couldn't identify that was right under his nose. It upset him, because he didn't like to think that he was that slow that he couldn't recognize something that obvious.

It was driving him nuts, because it appeared in every dream without exception. Yumichika was _always_ small, and was always privy to some sort of information that he needed. Yumichika was the only remotely-rational person in his strange dreams, and when he - if ever - started acting weird, Ikkaku was sure that he only did it to mess with him.

But full lucidity hadn't rushed back to him yet; he was too busy coughing, because some glitter had gotten stuck in his throat.

"-Fuckin' fairy," he hacked. "What's wrong with you?"

There was little Yumichika on his shoulder, posing with two little fingers behind his head, pretending to be a devil. "Are you sure you want to choke Hisagi? It'd be a lot better if you'd kick him where it hurts," little Yumichika said, suddenly pointing an accusing finger at Hisagi's crotch. "He told me there was a snake in his pants yesterday! You should kill it!"

Ikkaku vaguely remembered Yumichika telling him something about Hisagi making advances towards him with lewd descriptions of his 'snake' the day before, but it didn't fully dawn on him that what doll-Yumichika was talking about now wasn't an actual snake.

He just looked at Hisagi like a crazy person – Who on earth would willingly put a snake near their goods? This warped mindset that Ikkaku had while dreaming was _exactly_ the reason he needed Yumichika for advice. Everyone in his dreams were loopy in some way or another, and Ikkaku wasn't good with public relations and often needed help dealing with them.

"Hey." Ikkaku frowned in confusion, looking at his other shoulder. "Isn't there supposed to be an angel guy on this side?"

"Of course not, stupid, I was just making a joke," tiny Yumichika said, taking his devil-horn fingers away from his head, crossing his arms. Ikkaku scowled and without any forethought, he snatched the little person off of him, holding him in his fist, intending to bring him up to his face so he could yell at him for giving Hisagi his underwear.

He gasped, opening his palm, because Yumichika wasn't in his hand anymore, suddenly. Had he crushed him? Had he been too rough and flung him to the ground? Where did he go?

That was another thing that disturbed him when he thought about it awake. In almost a third of the dreams, he ended up killing poor Yumichika in sudden fits of rage or pique. Of course, he'd feel guilty the moment after it happened, realizing that their petty arguments had resulted in the little doll's death.

"Oh fuck, where'd he go?" Ikkaku yelled in panic, looking down at the floor and under each of his feet, trying to see if he'd dropped him on accident or stepped on him.

"Ha-_hah,_" Hisagi gloated, smiling smugly.

Ikkaku looked up, realizing that Hisagi was still in front of him. The underwear were gone, and in their place was Yumichika. He was wearing little clothes that looked just like his work uniform, and he was holding a pink-plastic hairbrush that was obviously for a doll.

"Ikkaku, have you seen my sword?" little Yumichika asked in dismay. "I found my hairbrush, but I can't find my sword. Do you know where it is?"

Hisagi didn't seem to hear Yumichika, or perhaps he was just ignoring him. Ikkaku thought back to Yumichika's missing sword and the sheath just lying there. If Yumichika had lost it, it would've been both the sword and sheath missing, so it had probably been taken by someone.

"Ikkaku, look what I got," Hisagi exclaimed excitedly, shaking the tiny person in his grip. Yumichika moaned, dropping his brush onto the ground as he clutched his head and begging to be treated gently. The clatter of the little pink plastic comb grabbed Ikkaku's attention, and he bent down to pick it up, looking at it. It was smooth tortoise-shell with soft red prickles on it, just like Yumichika's real hairbrush, only miniature.

_'That's weird,_' he thought, '_I could've sworn it was pink plastic, like a little girl's toy... like just a second ago...'_

Ikkaku came a little closer to scrutinize what exactly Hisagi had, even though he knew it was his Yumichika-jiminy-cricket-type-thingie. "What have ya' got?" Hisagi held Yumichika up to show him off. There was Yumichika squeezed in his hands, the same size as one of those plastic living-world dolls, with a scowl on his face.

Yumichika made a gesture for Ikkaku to come closer, cupping his little hands around his mouth to tell him a secret. When Ikkaku moved his ear close to him, Yumichika glared up at Hisagi. "I think Hisagi took my sword."

Ikkaku frowned. It was strange how Yumichika was really the only person in his dreams who talked actual sense and acted somewhat rationally. If only it weren't so frustrating to deal with him. For some reason, Ikkaku always got into arguments with Yumichika, the same kind they had in real life - but they always resulted in disaster here. It was a shame, because Yumichika was pretty cute all tiny like that.

"Isn't it cute? I got it for two hundred-yen." The Yumichika-doll gave an indignant shriek, saying something about never being that cheap. Hisagi began humming and playing with the doll like a small child would, taking off its little clothes.

"You have a date soon, Yumichika," Hisagi said to his toy. "We have to get you in your party clothes!" Yumichika didn't seem upset anymore and sat down on Hisagi's palms, starting to take off his sandals and tabi. Hisagi picked at the little sash around his middle, undoing his hakama.

Yumichika _always_ acted rationally in his dreams, even though he sometimes enjoyed interacting with the loopy idiots wandering around, especially Hisagi. But this did not occur to Ikkaku right then, and he had no earthly idea why Yumichika would allow Hisagi to strip him down.

Well of course there was the fact that sometimes Yumichika would actually call himself a doll and would act like one too; liking to play, and liking to have his hair brushed, and things like that.

So in the midst of this, Ikkaku did what he always did in sticky situations: He shouted.

"What the- Hey!" Ikkaku yelled, banging on a pane of glass that was suddenly in front of him. "Give him back, you pervert! What are you doing?!"

"I'm playing with him," Hisagi said, grinning widely.

"This is a sign, you big dummy," the Yumichika-doll said with dignity, even though the tiny orange collar of his uniform was being pulled over his head, along with his outer yukata. "So pay attention to it."

"You crazy dick-hole, give him back to me, he's mine! That's my toy!" Ikkaku shouted, like he was a little kid who'd had his favorite dump-truck stolen on the playground.

"Put me down, you behemoth, you're being too rough," Yumichika said, biting Hisagi's thumb.

"Ouch!" Hisagi said in surprise, bopping Yumichika on the head. Yumichika looked woozy, standing unsteadily and almost falling off Hisagi's hand. Ikkaku howled in rage, saying that Hisagi might break his little neck if he wasn't careful. "Ikkaku, I'm gonna' punish him for biting me. How old is Yumichika? I have to spank him for every year he's lived-"

"It's _not_ my birthday," Yumichika replied sassily, sounding a little delirious still, inaccurately punching at Hisagi's fingers, which were wrapping around him.

"C'mon, you're gonna' hurt him, Hisagi. Just give him back to me," Ikkaku said, suddenly able to get through the glass and grab Yumichika by his little arm.

"Help, help me! You need me to get out of here," peeped the little doll. Ikkaku pulled on his arm to try to get Hisagi to let go of his other arm. "Ow," Yumichika cried, little tears getting his finger wet. Ikkaku didn't want to rip Yumichika in half, so he slapped Hisagi's face and pried the doll out of his hand, running away like a crazy person. He just avoided banging into Kenpachi at the door.

"Sorry, Taichou, I gotta' get out of here!" Ikkaku shouted, suddenly aware again that this was a dream and that he had to find out how to get out. Talking to the people in his dreams – besides Yumichika – slowly made him forget that he was asleep, so it was best to avoid interacting with them. Usually only Hisagi did that, but it was safer not to talk to anyone for too long. It was like Alice in fucking Wonderland, surrounded by loopy idiots.

"Woah, Madarame, what happened to your toy just now?" Zaraki asked with a curious tone that would never pass his Captain's lips in real life.

"Uhh, Gotta' go, Captain. Hisagi stole his clothes – I'm not a pervert, I swear," Ikkaku said awkwardly, pushing past his captain into the next room, which was a long twisting corridor, one of Seireitei's streets. This was good, he'd gotten outside at least. There seemed to be something wrong with the sky, like the space up there wasn't actually real.

"Geez, can't you be a little gentler, you oaf," Yumichika complained in his grip, hair rustling in the wind from the speed Ikkaku was running.

"Aren't you glad that I saved you from Hisagi?"

"No, he was playing with me," Yumichika whined. "Now I'm going to be ugly for my date!"

"It's called a blind date, anyway," Ikkaku grumbled, feeling jealous for a reason he didn't understand. When he was awake later, he would wonder what Yumichika had meant by 'date', even if his dream self wasn't actually real.

"That doesn't mean my date's blind, you big idiot!" Yumichika shrieked at him. Ikkaku held him up to his face, and now he could see that Yumichika was wearing the same kimono he'd had on when they'd met.

"Oh," Ikkaku said, holding him closer to his eyes, really scrutinizing Yumichika. Every detail was perfect, just like always. "You look beautiful," he said, forgetting about what he was doing. Yumichika leaned in and touched his cheek with his little hand.

"Thank you," Yumichika said, not sounding angry anymore. "I can't wait to go on my date with you!" Yumichika leaned forward and kissed just below his eye with his little lips. This didn't bother Ikkaku for some reason, and a sudden unrelated thought occurred to him.

"Hey, I never asked you before, but I think I should before I wake up." Instantly, the surroundings started to blur and shake. "Why are you so small all the time?"

Yumichika had been just about to answer him, when the walls started crumbling, and a big rock fell on Ikkaku's foot.

"Ikkaku!"

"Huh?" Ikkaku grunted, wiping his eyes.

"Get up, you're late for your date." Yumichika shook his shoulder again, leaving to go to the bathroom and put on his feathers. Ikkaku lay back, staring at the ceiling for a few minutes, feeling drowsy and confused. His heart was aching a little.

"My date?"

"Your date with the Captain, remember?"

"What?!" Ikkaku shouted, getting out of bed, grabbing his sword. Fuck if he had to fight the Captain in his pajamas. It was no wonder that Renji had started looking at him with that concerned expression. He really was falling apart lately.

People had thought he was crazy since he'd first arrived in Seireitei, but now he was finally beginning his actual descent into madness.

He was getting haunted by dreams, filled with dolls and mini-Yumichikas that he often killed in fits of rage. Aside from that, there were kid Hisagi's, crying Kiras, violent Yachirus, mute Renjis, and a whole bunch of inappropriate conversations.

Not to mention his again building feelings for Yumichika - which were catalyzed and made worse by the little clone he saw at night.

It was official: He was going fucking insane.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2: How to cook the biggest jerk with extra salt

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Ikkaku groaned, leaning his head forward onto the lunch table. His head was pounding and he was cranky from lack of sleep. He supposed that he could call the dreams he'd been having 'nightmares'. They were disturbing, weird, and just plain exhausting. He hadn't gotten a restful night's sleep in a really long time.

Ikkaku could feel Yumichika patting his back and heard him asking something, but he didn't pay attention. He was just so tired. A few slaps to his shoulder and a couple punches came from his subordinates as they tried to jolt him into awareness, but he just grumbled at them.

Especially this thing with Yumichika visiting him nightly - that was bothering him the most. Maybe this whole 'stuck in dreams' and 'finding a solution' thing had to do with Yumichika himself. He appeared in every dream. Maybe that was because he hadn't found a way to get rid of him and pass this dumb test.

If the answer was to ask Yumichika out again, he was going to throw an absolute fit, because that meant his nightmares were going to go on forever.

What was worse was that he was starting to _feel_ in his dreams. They were becoming so realistic that he could feel touch, pain especially, and - embarrassing as it was to admit - arousal.

He had almost died in his own dreams at least twenty times, and he was wondering what would happen if he did. Maybe he'd try it; maybe if he died in dreams, he'd die in real life, and then all of this ridiculousness could end. Screw a warrior's death. These dreams were fucking annoying.

"Are you okay?" Yumichika asked loudly. Ikkaku clutched at his ears, whining. "Why do you look so miserable?"

"I didn't get any sleep last night," Ikkaku mumbled, glaring at Yumichika. _Fuck_ that vain bastard. Why did he have to fall in love with _him_, the most unattainable person on this godforsaken earth? He must be some sort of masochist, because this whole thing was just plain torture.

Ikkaku had thought he'd buried these feelings for good, but they were coming back to haunt him. He wasn't safe awake or asleep anymore. Damnit.

Well, he guessed it wasn't Yumichika's fault. He'd probably brought this on himself. Maybe it would help to be nicer to Yumichika. There's no way he can go wrong with being nice, right? They were already best friends, but being kinder might help Yumichika to like him more, and then he might have a fraction of a chance.

Oh yeah, right. He'd ask his mini-Yumichika what he thought about it, and maybe then he'd think about doing it. He didn't _really_ want to have these dreams for the rest of his life.

So Ikkaku sighed and answered Yumichika as civilly as he could manage. "I stayed up late to finish making that stupid maze puzzle Hisagi wanted for Seireitei Communication." He rolled his eyes when Yumichika hummed in interest.

"He actually entrusted you with making one? Impressive." Yumichika actually looked impressed, which wasn't common these days. Ikkaku groaned, setting his head back down, but before he could lay it on the table, Yumichika slipped his hand under his forehead.

"Hey, get up." Ikkaku got up with a scowl, looking at Yumichika. "Where's the puzzle?" Yumichika wasn't normally interested with anything that had to do with him anymore. It was sad to think of how they'd grown apart over the course of this horrible year. Maybe he was just interested because the maze had to do with 'Shuuhei'. Ikkaku scowled. Damn that tattoo-faced bastard.

At least he could turn his anger on Hisagi and feel no guilt about it.

He tried to pretend that Yumichika had asked because he was concerned with him and his life, but he couldn't quite make it work, so he pouted a little, leaning on his elbow and hand. Ikkaku pulled out the maze from where he'd stowed it in his yukata and handed it to Yumichika. "Douzo," Ikkaku yawned, putting a hand over his mouth.

Yumichika held the crumpled sheet up in front of his face, turning it this way and that, trying to figure out which way was up. "What's this you scribbled all over it? Is this the solution?"

"I dunno', I couldn't find one."

Yumichika looked at him with annoyance."You made the maze yourself. Can't you solve it, you idiot?... You're supposed to make it with a solution."

"Geez, enough with the whinin', it's too early for this shit, Yumichika," Ikkaku grouched, stuffing his face with sticky rice in an effort to stop his headache. Chewing helped sometimes – and Yumichika usually stopped talking to him when his mouth was full, because he tended to answer whether he had food in his mouth or not.

"Oh, one more thing. Renji-kun's been looking for you. He said he needs to talk to you." Yumichika was looking at him with genuine concern now, which healed Ikkaku's inner wounds a little bit. He really wanted to bridge this gap that had appeared between them - they never spent any time together anymore and it made him really sad.

He fucking hated being sad. It made him feel completely pathetic and lonely.

"Oh yeah? I asked him ta' come over in a couple days – hope that's okay with ya'," he tacked on, trying to be considerate. He couldn't just spend forever waiting for Yumichika to reach out to him. Yumichika had followed him for years, and Ikkaku had just blindly trusted that he always would. He had found that he missed Yumichika's company, never having an opportunity to realize how much he'd valued it until it was gone. Ikkaku hoped that it would help if he reached out himself once in a while.

"Of course it's alright. I'll even make some snacks for you two if you like." Ikkaku grinned. Wow, seemed like it was working already. He was glad he didn't have heart problems, or he'd have been dead a long time ago with all this beat-skipping and fluttering and shit. "Just don't be too rowdy while I'm trying to sleep." Yumichika smiled at him just like he used to, with all that familiarity that he'd thought had disappeared. At that moment, Ikkaku felt strong enough to destroy a mountain.

Ikkaku had the stupidest grin on his face. He needed to get out of here before he said something really dumb.

"Yeah, yeah, like you need beauty rest, you moron." He got up from the lunch table, walking out, leaving Yumichika and his incredulous expression behind. Damn, he shouldn't've said that.

At least Yumichika had on a stupid smile now too.

* * *

Zaraki sent Ikkaku home early with orders to 'get some goddamn rest'. He could hardly fight in this state, getting cut all over the place and stumbling and shit. Rather than get pissed over his superior seeing him weak, he obeyed and went home for a forced vacation day.

He went to sit down on the couch and thought about reading Yumichika's 'Are you okay with that?' articles for Hisagi's newspaper, but he found that his eyes crawled over the page without reading and that he was yawning every few seconds, out of sleepiness of course, not because Yumichika's writing was boring. He heard a door open and suddenly thought it was a good idea to meditate, so he scooted off the couch and sat on the ground cross-legged.

After a few minutes of clear mind and steady breathing, he heard a hollow noise, like something had fallen on a metal plate. It had startled him after the long silence, and immediately he was worried about banging his legs into the coffee table in front of him, but when he opened his eyes, he found that he was in an empty metal room with curved walls. Yumichika was standing in front of him, tiny, with arms crossed and foot tapping away at the ground.

"What the hell. Where did you come from?"

"I didn't want to interrupt you, you're looking very sleepy these days. I wonder if you'd tell me what's troubling you?"

"I don't wanna' talk about it," Ikkaku griped. "How long have you been there?"

"Since you sat down," Yumichika replied.

"Did I call you again?" Ikkaku asked warily, remembering something Yumichika had said about only appearing when he was called.

"No."

"Then why are you here?" he asked suspiciously. Yumichika usually had some sort of motive that didn't involve him. This time he had seemed to appear, just wanting to be helpful. It was these kinds of dreams, however, that Yumichika was the _least _helpful.

"I miss you. Why don't you spend time with me anymore?" Yumichika asked with a hurt expression. "Don't you get lonely without me? Has my company finally become boring?"

"I can't talk to you like I used to," Ikkaku explained, much less reserved here than he was with the real Yumichika. "I'm feeling things that I'm not supposed to, and I don't want it to mess things up... Things are just fine right now, and I don't wanna' risk losing them."

"Losing what things?"

"Losing you, you jerk," Ikkaku said with a scowl as he held his hand out on the ground for Yumichika to get on.

"I see," said the little person with an expression he couldn't decipher. "You should consider being this honest with the other."

"The other what?"

"The other me," Yumichika said, climbing onto his hand, clinging to his thumb. Ikkaku blinked. Oh right, he was dreaming.

Rather than start an argument over why he couldn't talk about this with the real Yumichika, Ikkaku changed the subject.

"Where are we?" Ikkaku asked, standing up and looking around. He could feel a sudden shift in the dream-scape as he fully realized he was sleeping. Yumichika's attitude immediately changed as well, and everything around him felt a little more solid as he was locked into his dream. This was when everything would start going strange.

He was starting to realize that before he became fully lucid, the dream's events had more to do with his awake life: he had been thinking about not being able to talk to Yumichika earlier when he'd been at lunch. As he became stuck in his dream, things started to take their own strange twists and turns as his fantasies and subconscious fears took control of things.

"Ay', answer me. Where are we?"

"You tell me, you idiot, can't you recognize the inside of your own head?" Yumichika sassed, taking on his unhelpful unconcerned attitude.

"Shut up, Thumbelina, we're not in my head." Ikkaku kicked the sides of the round metal room they were inside of. There were no doors or windows, and he had no idea how they'd gotten in here. "I hear people outside," he mumbled, pressing his ear to the cold wall. He wondered if he should call out for someone to come get them, but thought better of it.

"Thumbelina? What the hell do you take me for?!" Yumichika screeched in indignance, tapping his foot against Ikkaku's palm. Ikkaku smooshed him, cupping him between his hands. "Hey! You're going to get stuck here! Stop!"

"Don't talk, you might draw unwanted attention." Yumichika wormed his torso through a gap in his fingers, pouting at him. Ikkaku brought him up to his face.

"And you don't? Mr. bald-tattoo-eyed-shouting-swordsman-basta-" Ikkaku shoved him back between his hands.

"If you're not gonna' give me advice on getting out of here, then be quiet or leave me alone."

"You're one to talk, you're the one who keeps bringing me here," Yumichika shouted, voice muffled by his fingers. "That makes you the biggest jerk. I can't leave once you think of me, you stupid-"

"Shut up! You said that I didn't call you this time!"

"Well you did by thinking of the other just then, so now we both can't leave, you idiot!" Yumichika yelled through his hand.

Ikkaku, on an angry whim, squeezed Yumichika really hard.

Yumichika didn't talk after that, and Ikkaku was horrified to find that blood was dripping out from his closed fist. Panicked, he opened his hand, but as he opened his hand, his eyes did too, and he was sitting on his couch, with drool on his cheek, Yumichika slapping his face telling him to get up.

"What, what do you want?" Ikkaku grumbled woozily, pushing at Yumichika's hands. That dream had been weird. That conversation they'd had at the beginning… What had that been about? It had seemed almost… _realistic_, and that disturbed him more than all of the other strange things that had happened. Then there was the matter of that horrible jerk in his gut when he'd seen how much he'd hurt Yumichika. His heart was taking a minute to slow down.

"Shh… I wondered why you let your dinner get cold. Come to bed, Ikkaku," Yumichika said softly, and Ikkaku realized that it was dark outside. "You're going to get a crick in your neck if you sleep there."

"Oh…" Ikkaku said, standing up, rubbing at his already-sore neck. "Thanks."

Yumichika looked at him in the dark for a moment. "I'm worried about you, Ikkaku…" He sighed, turning around and walking to their bedroom. "I'll listen if you need to talk."

"Everything's fine," Ikkaku said, ignoring the doll's advice, still a little shaky after awaking in such a fright. He'd… he'd fucking crushed Yumichika in his hand, and for what? What had he really done that for?

He rubbed at his eyes – he really needed to think things over, maybe get some medication. That talk with Renji couldn't come soon enough. He laid down in his futon, not bothering to change out of his uniform. It only took him a few moments of watching Yumichika's chest rise and fall for him to get back to sleep again.

He was there in that room again, with Yumichika in his hand. Maybe this was what Yumichika had meant by stuck – he was stuck in this scenario until he figured out a solution or an answer or something. Damn.

"Where are we?"

"You tell me, can't you recognize the inside of your own head?"

"This has happened before, hasn't it," Ikkaku mused. "I'd better not squeeze you anymore, huh?" Yumichika pursed his lips, staring at him with narrowed eyes.

"Oh, killing me has wizened you up now, has it?"

"Shh," Ikkaku said, walking around the metal room, thinking that he should look more carefully this time so he could start working out whatever dream-task he had to complete. "There's nothing in here, what the hell am I supposed to do?"

"There's no doors. What the hell do you think _that_ means, then?" Yumichika replied. Ikkaku ignored him, hitting the ground with his foot, frowning at the hollow sound it made. He jumped once and was surprised at the big gong noise that followed. So this room wasn't grounded - they were suspended above something, perhaps? Yumichika's face went green from what to him was a huge lurch.

"Put me down, I'm going to throw up.,"

"Sorry," Ikkaku said meekly, setting him on the metal ground. Yumichika started retching on his little hands and knees, only vomiting up what was a few drops of puke to someone of Ikkaku's size.

"Here," Ikkaku set his hand out again, feeling guilty. "Get on, I won't shake you anymore."

Yumichika sniffed, pale in the face. "I don't believe you. You look hungry to me." Yumichika crossed his arms, sniffing again and turning away from him in a sulking manner.

"I'm not gonna' eat you, what's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that Hisagi is about to open the lid to this pot," Yumichika said as if it was information plain to everyone. He pointed up. "Obviously." Ikkaku figured this was another of those strange pieces of advice that Yumichika gave.

Sure enough, Ikkaku looked up at the ceiling, realizing that they were in a huge soup pot and that gigantic Hisagi was about to pour a box of chicken stock in on top of them.

"Oh shit, WAIT-" He snatched up the tiny Yumichika, and suddenly the room was flooded with bouillon. Ikkaku screamed, getting whooshed all over, barely able to stay on his feet.

After a moment of confusion, he spat out cold soup, wiping the salty yellowish liquid from his eyes. He was up to his armpits in the stuff, and poor little Yumichika looked completely pitiful, soaked and coughing up soup. "I told you to eat dinner last night, but you didn't, did you," Yumichika hacked, breath rattling, "and now look, we're going to be eaten by Hisagi."

For some reason, dream-Ikkaku was unconcerned by this whole situation and was more interested with Hisagi in general. "Why's Hisagi a giant?" He could hear a flickering noise outside, probably a stove burner getting turned on. Fuck, they were gonna' get _cooked_. Ikkaku suddenly realized he had bare feet, pressed against the still-cold metal base of the pot.

"He's not a giant. He's normal. _You're small_," Yumichika said, crossing his arms sassily, "Duh."

"Well then what are you?" Ikkaku asked in confusion, trying to stand without his feet slipping on the bottom of the pot.

"Extra small, obviously."

"Oh, okay, glad that's cleared up," he said sarcastically, but started screaming when Hisagi lifted the pot lid again and dropped in some chopped onions and other vegetables. They hit the soup like bombs, and the splashes nearly drowned him and the extra-small Yumichika.

Ikkaku coughed, noticing that the soup level had risen a bit, and that the bottom of the pot was starting to get warm. He looked up, stinging liquid getting in his eyes, and he started screaming again as Hisagi stuck in the biggest fucking wooden spoon he'd ever seen. Hisagi made a soup whirlpool as he stirred, and Ikkaku tried to hold Yumichika above the soup so that his advice-doll could breathe.

His feet were starting to get burnt already as the sides of the pot got warmed up from the fire. This was fucking messed up. How the hell was he supposed to escape from this?! The walls were too steep, slippery, and now too hot to even touch.

"Let us out of here, Hisagi, why are you trying ta' eat us?!" Ikkaku shouted up at apparently normal-sized Hisagi.

"Shh," Hisagi said with a frown, covering the pot again.

"You fucker! Answer me!" Ikkaku shouted in anger, feeling like punching something but having nothing but soup around him.

"He's on a date with Kira, and he needs a mix of your courage and my sensuality," Yumichika explained, trying to fix his sopping hair. Ikkaku looked at him, up to his shoulders, treading in Hisagi's soup.

After a quiet moment with only the sound of soup waves hitting the walls of the pot, Ikkaku stared at Yumichika some more. "He probably's adding you just to kill you."

"Fine, you jerk, get out of the soup dream yourself, I'm leaving," Yumichika said, twisting his little body to face the other way inside Ikkaku's fist.

"Leaving where? We can't fucking get out of here!" Ikkaku screeched at the little doll, chucking him at the wall on a sudden angry impulse. _Damn_ him. He knew how to get out of here, but he'd rather get boiled alive than just tell him how.

Yumichika smacked into the wall like a pancake, and slid down the hot side of the pot slowly, leaving a trail of blood behind.

"Fuck," Ikkaku said, slowly being drowned by the rising level of hot soup that was mixing with a sea of Yumichika's blood. _Now _how was he going to get out? Why'd he have to go and do that? "What are you gonna' do to me?"

"Huh?" said Hisagi, opening up the pot lid to peer in at him. He was wearing a stupid frilly apron and had something smeared on his face. Ikkaku realized that the pot was filling up and that he couldn't touch the bottom of the pot with his feet anymore, forcing to tread in the soup.

"What are you gonna' do to-"

"Salt you!" Hisagi shouted, taking the lid off of a salt shaker and dumping the whole thing into the pot.

"Wait, it doesn't need anymore salt, look at all this blood!" he shouted, but it was too late, the salt had been stirred in, and Hisagi was milling around somewhere out of his field of vision, probably chopping more vegetables.

"Kira's gonna' hate your soup, Hisagi," he said to himself quietly, taking a little sip of the lukewarm stew. "It tastes awful." He could hear Hisagi outside of the pot chuck something on the floor in anger.

"Frick, why'd you have to ruin it, Ikkaku? It's all bloody, what's wrong with you?!" Ikkaku frowned. How on earth had Hisagi heard that?

Aw fuck, he'd killed Yumichika. How was he gonna' get out of here now? He was stuck in this stupid soup dream, and he was gonna' get eaten by Kira and Hisagi on their stupid date.

"I didn't think he'd ruin the taste, quit yelling at m-" He inhaled a mouthful of soup, choking and suddenly sitting up in bed, coughing hard.

Yumichika was looking at him strangely, putting on his uniform. "You've been talking and coughing all night. You don't sound so good, I think you should stay in bed."

"Mm," Ikkaku said, blinking sleepily. He had no desire to go back to that stupid dream, but he was even more averse to drag himself into work today.

"You said something about adding me to kill me." Ikkaku stared at him, probably with a comical expression on his face. "Did I die in your dream? I hear if you die in dreams, you die in real life."

"Don't make me kick you, Yumichika," Ikkaku grumbled darkly, rolling over in bed and pulling the covers over his head. Yumichika had better not be right, because he was probably going to die the next time he got stuck in Hisagi's dumb-ass soup.

"You're just lucky that you don't have to work today, or I would pick on you all day about your weird sleep talking."

Ikkaku didn't answer, staying underneath the blankets. He'd killed Yumichika again in his soup-dream; he hadn't learned anything. Why hadn't it bothered him that he'd hurt Yumichika so bad? He'd fucking crushed him on the side of a pot, probably breaking his little spine. Geezo' pete, he was gonna' get stuck in that stupid dream again – what if Yumichika didn't show up next time?

When he saw Hisagi later that day when he went to get some lunch, he hurriedly passed by him without saying hello. He needed to get some rest.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3: How to stop ignoring the signs and reach the heart of the matter

* * *

"Where are we?"

"You idiot, can't you recognize the-"

"Oh fuck, don't say that again, just answer me!" Ikkaku shouted, shaking Yumichika a little as he swam around in the lukewarm soup. He could've sworn the pot was bigger than last time – maybe he was just smaller. That might have to do with the fact that he thought this scenario was hopeless and that he'd never escape it.

Yumichika yelled back at him in exasperation, "You _are_ an idiot. If you know that this has happened before, you should remember where we are!"

"You _could_ just play along, you know," Ikkaku grouched, spitting out soup. "Yuck, soup tastes nasty if it's not warmed up."

"Well how come you ate all of that soup you didn't eat last night, for breakfast earlier even though you left it to get cold?" Yumichika asked in confusion. Ikkaku had to pause and wonder how dream-Yumichika knew something that the real Yumichika had done.

"Well... You made it for me, so of course I ate it! I didn't wanna' hurt yer' feelings, so I tried some, and then I realized how fucking hungry I was!"

"Okay, okay, just get us out of here already," Yumichika demanded, as if it was Ikkaku's fault that they'd been tarrying here.

"I would if you'd fucking tell me how!" Ikkaku shouted, blowing his stack, really feeling like punching something, just barely hanging onto his cool, because he knew that killing Yumichika would cause the dream to reset again. He settled for slamming a fist down into the soup, satisfied with the splash.

"Alright, alright. Before the pot gets too hot, you need to push off of each wall." Yumichika pointed, wiping soup from his eyes with his other hand. "If you get the soup-wave big enough, maybe it will push the pot off the burner a little, and then it might fall to the floor."

"Okay, good plan," Ikkaku said obediently, going to do what he said, knowing that even if Yumichika's advice sounded ridiculous, it was usually correct. However, some part of his rational mind lingered, telling him to rethink this. "Wait, what after that? What'll happen when we fall and hit the floor?"

Yumichika was silent for a little while. Ikkaku groaned, putting his face in his hand. Yumichika still probably was right. The little jerk always loved proving himself right about stupid things.

"We'll burn that bridge when we get to it."

"It's _cross_ that bridge, and you have no idea, do you," Ikkaku said knowingly, mad how stupid this plan was, even though he knew it would probably end up working. "We might bounce, or we might just die," Ikkaku said as he swam over to the side of the pot, pushing off of the wall with his feet. "Fuck, it's already starting to get too hot!" Ikkaku shoved off of the other wall, scalding his heels.

"No, I _meant_ to say 'burn'," Yumichika insisted, thinking Ikkaku hadn't understood his pun. "You see it's supposed to be funny, because-"

"It's not funny," Ikkaku said flatly, getting his temper under control, enough that he was actually quite proud of himself. The next time he woke up, he was going to drink a beer to celebrate his self control. "It hurts," he hissed, burning the bottoms of his feet as he pushed off the other side.

"You're doing well, the pot's rocking," Yumichika noted, coughing as the wave washed a little too high and splashed his face. He clung to Ikkaku's thumb to try to keep steady as he was tossed around by Ikkaku's increasingly powerful shoves.

"You're doing good. You're getting a wave going," Yumichika congratulated, smiling sunnily even though they were supposed to be close to death. It was that smile that Yumichika had used to give him all the time, the smile that was so adoring, so very proud of him, those eyes that always saw him through rose colored glasses. Yumichika always supported him, believed in him, agreed with him, and Ikkaku hadn't realized how much strength it gave him until it was taken away.

He hardly ever saw that smile anymore, which was a little 'out-putting'. He was always screwing up these days, and Yumichika no longer followed him with blind loyalty. It sucked that the only person who had ever been proud of him wasn't anymore.

"Keep going, I felt it rock," Yumichika said, smiling wider, giving him some confidence. Ikkaku believed him, even though he himself hadn't felt anything but the sharp sting in his feet.

Ikkaku was encouraged by this, and continued, even though his feet were getting burns all over them. Burnt soles were better than being boiled alive. They didn't have very much time left. Their skin was already turning red.

"Hey, what the fuck are you doing?" Hisagi shouted, stomping over to the stove. Ikkaku shoved off another wall, finally feeling the pot almost move off the burner. Hisagi took the pot lid off just in time to get splashed with hot soup.

Ikkaku laughed as Hisagi screamed in pain, - not because Hisagi had been burnt, but because they were almost free! - but his happiness at his success quickly turned to horror when Hisagi threw the pot in the air in his struggle to get the scalding liquid off of him.

"Holy fuck!" Ikkaku was washed out of the pot onto the floor, impact softened by various vegetables and chopped meat. Yumichika had escaped his grip and was coughing somewhere behind a huge potato chunk. "Hey," Ikkaku whisper-called, "Hey, where are you, Yumi? Are you okay?"

Hisagi was still yelling, stripping his shirt off and throwing it across the room. His feet were making loud bumps, sending shockwaves through the floor, causing Ikkaku to lose balance. Poor Yumichika kept slipping in the soup and getting bounced up and down off his feet whenever Hisagi took a step.

"Wow, your kitchen's a mess," Ikkaku noted, standing up and going over to pick Yumichika up, carefully patting his back with a finger to help him breathe. He was extremely pale, clutching at his throat as he coughed, chest trembling._ 'Poor little guy...'_ Ikkaku thought.

Somehow Hisagi heard his sarcastic comment and whirled around, pointing at him. "_You_ did this, you bastard!" Hisagi shouted in anger.

Ikkaku put a hand on his hip, pouting as he looked up at Hisagi, who he was sure had gotten a little smaller... or maybe he'd gotten a bit bigger. "Well, why did you just throw the pot in the air, you lunatic?"

"I _didn't_, you splashed me with boiling soup! I was freaking out because it hurt!"

"_You_ shouldn't have tried to cook us!" Ikkaku accused, growing a little bit bigger again as he pointed back at Hisagi, letting Yumichika crawl up onto his shoulder

"Pfft. It's not _my_ fault you're hungry," Hisagi scoffed, crossing his arms.

"You see what I mean," Yumichika said sassily, referring to his earlier comment on how Ikkaku looked hungry and that that was the reason they were being eaten alive - which made no sense. Ikkaku groaned, facepalming. Suddenly Yumichika's face was grave, serious and a bit fearful. "Let's go, we need to get out of this house. Something bad's comi-"

Suddenly, Yumichika was half-slapping half-patting his face. "Get up, wake up, Ikkaku."

"What, what's wrong?" he asked groggily, smiling a little, knowing that he'd finally passed that stupid soup dream, whatever the point of it was. Maybe it was to stand up to Hisagi and not let him get in his way, even if he seemed like an obstacle. Maybe it was to be stubborn and not give up even in the face of impossible tasks. "It's the weekend, whatcha' wake me for?" The bottoms of his feet were prickling like they had fallen asleep.

"I'm sorry to wake you, I know how tired you've been. I just thought I should get you up, because Renji's here," Yumichika said quietly, patting his shoulder before wandering out of the bedroom in his lounge clothes. "I'm just going to go over to Rangiku's so you two can have some privacy. There's some snacks in the kitchen that I made."

"Okay, thanks," Ikkaku called back, wiping his eyes and getting out of bed, putting on a clean shirt and coming out into the front room, scratching his stomach with a yawn. "Hey, Red. Ya' bring tha-"

Renji held up the alcohol with a grin. Ikkaku grinned back, trying to snatch it, but Renji deftly moved it out of his reach. "Hey. Talk first. Booze after." Ikkaku whined but flopped down onto the couch. His kouhai knew him too well.

"Bye, Yumichika," Ikkaku mumbled as Yumichika toed on his shoes and left with a parting wave.

"So," Renji began, "Shoot." Ikkaku gave a weary sigh, sinking into the couch as Renji sat down next to him, took the lid off of the sake, sipped some, and put it on the coffee table. When Ikkaku reached for it, he smacked his hand. "_Talk_, Ikkaku."

Ikkaku sat there for a while, looking glum, before taking a breath to speak. Apparently he'd been quiet for long enough that Renji decided to prompt him again, so he was interrupted. "Dude, you haven't been lookin' so good for a while now. We're getting worried about you," Renji said uneasily. "Like _actually worried."_

"I toldja' I'm having nightmares, damnit," Ikkaku grumbled in embarrassment. Seriously, Madarame-Ikkaku, wielder of the dragon sword who'd killed more people than he could count, was brought to his knees by bad dreams. Maybe he was turning into Kurosaki. Ikkaku had never been cut out for hero work. Heroes got guilty, and Madarame Ikkaku just didn't _do_ guilt. Maybe that was the problem here._  
_

"Oh yeah... Ya'... ya' wanna' talk about it? That's why I came."

Ikkaku grimaced and looked at him for a moment. "Are you sure you can handle it? They're fucked up." Renji made to nod, but Ikkaku pointed in his face. "You'd better not laugh."

"They're funny?"

"If I tell them out loud, yeah, they'll probably sound funny. They're ridiculous."

"I'll... try not to laugh, Senpai." Renji grinned. "So how long has this-"

"A _year_," Ikkaku said loudly, trying to impress on Renji that this was serious and was driving him out of his gourd. "A whole year!"

"Well shit, yer' gettin' desperate then if you're askin' for help. You never ask for help." Ikkaku crossed his arms, growling that it wasn't 'help', it was something else like advice or counseling. Renji refrained from pointing out that those were the same things.

Ikkaku then went red, mumbling nothing for a little while, fidgeting, before finally coming out with it. "You know about my Yumichika problem, right?" It wasn't as if he'd told Renji about his feelings for Yumichika, but the squad eleven method was to never say the truth out loud because everyone who needs to know already knows about it anyway. Besides, Renji always had that way to be able to read what was bugging him like it was written on his face. Maybe Renji was less emotionally constipated or something.

Renji was silent for a couple seconds, "Your crush on Yumichika-senpai?" Frick, how did he always do that?

Ikkaku put his head in his hands. "Ugh, don't say it like that, I'm not some kid making goo-goo eyes."

"So... Your _emoti-"_

"No!" Ikkaku shoved him.

"Your feelin-"

"Nooooo!" Ikkaku moaned, making a ghastly face, staring at Renji with wide eyes. Renji grimaced, puffing out his cheeks, looking down at his lap.

"Your problem..." Ikkaku didn't say anything. "With Yumichika." Ikkaku blinked, pursing his lips. Renji took a breath, going slower. "Your Yumichika problem... The problem with Yumichika is that you're in lo-"

Ikkaku covered Renji's mouth. "Don't! Say! It!" Renji shoved him right back this time, getting fed up with his stupid avoidance tactics. Ikkaku grimaced, seeing that Renji totally thought he was a coward for acting like this, and maybe he was right. He was a coward. Ugh, just thinking that made him want to go kill something and prove his virility.

"Will you stop it?! Not saying it doesn't make it go away! Saying it out loud doesn't jinx it, you asshole! They say the first step in recovering from something is admitting that you have a problem, and you _do. _The problem is not Yumichika, _the problem is you,_" Renji said loudly, making him listen.

Ikkaku's head flopped back on his shoulders, and he groaned miserably. "Ugh, you don't get it. I'm trying to _forget_ about it." Renji huffed, slapping him on the shoulder.

"Instead of forgetting about it, you should _do_ something about it." Ikkaku suddenly looked at him, face colored pale with lack of sleep and with frayed nerves, and Renji got the feeling that Ikkaku was one hundred percent terrified and sure that he could _never_ admit that to Yumichika. This secret was even more closely guarded than his bankai, which wasn't really saying much if you thought about it. Either way, he could tell that he wouldn't budge on this. He might be able to get Ikkaku to admit that he was smitten for Yumichika, but he wasn't going to get him to confess that to Yumichika, no, _never._

"I'm not doing something about it, Renji," Ikkaku said flatly, jumping a little after he said that, as if the idea had entered his mind that now Renji could go run off and tell on him. "You'd better keep your mouth shut," he said vehemently, but Renji saw through his anger straight to the fear that was really talking.

"I'm not gonna' tell, quit threatening me. We're friends."

"I'm just saying that two can keep a secret if one of them is dead," Ikkaku said flatly, that dangerous glint in his eye that appeared when someone talked about his lack of hair.

"Geez'o pete', Ikkaku, _fine!_ For solidarity, I'll tell _you_ a secret, and then we'll be even."

"Yeah?" Ikkaku said semi-curiously, not angry anymore.

"If it'll get you to just spill your dream-problem already." Ikkaku nodded, promising that he wouldn't even tell it to Yumichika. Of course, Ikkaku wasn't known for his secret-keeping. In fact, he was known for the opposite, so Renji was cautious in telling him."If this gets out, I'm telling Yumichika that you're sweet on him." Ikkaku just stared with a bleak expression, nodding, solemnly swearing that he'd not speak a word of it.

"I have a _Kurosaki_ problem," Renji said, looking a little gaunt as he said it out loud awkwardly. Now that he thought about it, it was probably the first time he'd said anything about it out loud. Ikkaku stared at him for a few seconds, confused, as if he thought he was missing something.

"What? No way, you guys are always fighting, you totally hate- ... hm..." Ikkaku scratched his chin, thinking back on... "Oh dude, you are so gone. That's kinda' cute." He gave an evil grin, and Renji punched him in the shoulder, cheeks red.

"You shut up! At least Yumichika's gay. I don't even have a chance, so you'd better shut up. Now just get to your problem already! You were trying to say something about your Yumichika problem."

"Oh yeah. I was gonna' say that I think my nightmares have something to do with my... uh, feelings,_" _he said awkwardly.

"I guess that makes sense... Wait... Didn't you try to ask Yumichika out last year?" Ikkaku didn't know how he could know that, because he hadn't told anyone of his plans. Maybe he'd told Renji when he was drunk, or maybe Renji had just figured it out on his own. "You were all upset and drinking yourself sick... Wait, they started at the same time? That's too big of a coincidence."

"I _know_," Ikkaku said woefully, head in his hands. "You know how it is. I don't want to tell him and maybe get rejected and ruin our friendship. I've known him longer than anyone. I just _can't_ lose him. I need another way out of this besides telling him."

"Okay."

Ikkaku began explaining his strange dream world, the people in it, and how warped everything was. Renji stayed quiet, listening intently to his description of the obstacles he had to overcome, particularly that Yumichika was small-sized.

"Hm, that's strange. Every time?" Ikkaku nodded. Renji frowned as if he'd noticed something but was reluctant in sharing it. "Tell me about the other people that show up often."

"Hisagi, Uh... Kira, Rangiku, you, the captain, the lieutenant... I mean, other people show up too... Old enemies, espada, coworkers... but it's mostly the first few that I end up talking to. That's pretty much it."

"Do they have anything weird, like how Yumichika's small?" Ikkaku was glad that Renji was finally taking this seriously. When Renji decided to be nice, he was very very nice. He tried to explain well so that he could get this help - he _really_ needed help, no matter how much his pride protested.

"Uh... Hisagi's kinda'... well, he' kinda' childish... He's either childish, stressed out, or in a hurry ta' get somewhere. I always thought that was cause' I have a hard time taking him seriously sometimes... We used ta' be good friends, but... I dunno', I just... Last night in the soup dream I was talking about, Hisagi was a giant."

Renji nodded, drumming his fingers on his mouth. "I know you said that you don't want me to take your problem with Yumichika into consideration-"

"I just don't want you to use it to explain everything away-"

"I'm not. I'm tellin' you, you can't just write it off if it actually might mean something. You said yourself that you think that's what's causing all this."

"Yeah?" Ikkaku asked cautiously.

"I think Hisagi was huge because he's competition. Half the time, you want to think he's stupid and not good enough for Yumichika, and the other half you see him as a threat." Ikkaku blinked. _Shit_, he was right. "He's competition for Yumichika's attention. That's why you stopped being friends with him and why you're always mad at him for no reason. It's jealousy. Kinda' like how I'll find myself getting mad at Orihime for no reason... Cause' she's crushin' on Ichigo. She's a sweet girl and I have no reason to hate her other than _jealousy._"

"I guess that makes sense," Ikkaku grumbled, not liking how petty that made him sound.

"How is Kira in the dreams?"

"I don't know, I haven't actually come across Kira in a while," Ikkaku mused. "I don't quite remember... Rangiku's always looking for Ichimaru though, and she's usually singing somethin' or othe- OH, Last time I saw Kira, he was with Rangiku."

"What were they doing?" Ikkaku deflated, because he couldn't remember that either. The only thing he recalled was that Kira was usually a mess of some kind. "Like a crying mess, or muddy kind of mess?" Ikkaku didn't remember; he just remembered Yumichika _calling_ Kira a mess. "Okay, we can get back to that. How 'bout me?"

"You actually are usually helpful, and I guess that makes sense cause' yer' helpin' me now... but I hardly ever find you. You're mute there, ya' don't talk. Yumichika told me once that it's because you know something, and that you're not allowed to tell me..."

"Ominous... Anything else?"

"You like to hide, which is why I hardly even find ya'... You like to play riddle games, but... sometimes you get crazy scary and violent if I make a wrong move. You also usually are around fire or fireworks or human weapons of some kind, which I don't get."

"Hm..." Renji looked like he didn't understand it either. "That doesn't make any sense. You don't see me as a threat to your power, do ya'?" Ikkaku shook his head. "You're not mad at me, and you don't have a grudge on me... So why?... I'm sure there's a connection, but I don't see it yet," Renji finished, sighing, crossing his ankles.

"I know you said you don't believe that dreams have any meaning... I remember you saying that a long time ago... But I think we can agree that these dreams are definitely linked." Ikkaku nodded. "There's something strange about it."

"Any advice?" Ikkaku asked woefully, "I'll take what I can get. I haven't had a restful sleep in almost a year. Seriously, it's fucking me up, man."

"Hm... You know, maybe if you were nicer to Yumichika, he'd be less inclined to ignore you and be all depressed and snotty. I don't know if you noticed, but he's been looking kinda' lonely and sad for a while now."

"If I didn't have to listen to his Hisagi love-noise all day, maybe I'd be less inclined to be mad at him," Ikkaku retorted. Renji sighed and insisted that he just try being more understanding.

"That might help at least, until we can figure out a way to stop this without you spilling the beans to Yumi."

"Alright, I'll try. The thing that's been worrying me the most is that lately Yumichika's been warning me of something big that's gonna' happen soon, and I think it might be something that's going to happen _here._"

Renji was stoic. "That's not good. We'll have to figure a solution before then." Ikkaku agreed, and then they finally had that drink that he'd been waiting for.

* * *

Ikkaku screamed, writhing in pain that was too much for him to handle. It felt so real, as intense, burning, and sharp as real pain, and it was freaking him out. After a huge clapping noise and a sizzle, the pain lessened, and he was flipped over onto his back by something. He kept wishing for Yumichika to come save him, because he couldn't take this pain without any help. There was no enemy to fight, he felt like he was on _fire_ for God's sake! He opened his eyes.

"Aw, what? A frying pan?"

"What is it with you and food dreams?" Yumichika snarked.

"I'm fucking _hungry!"_

"Well, why aren't you the one cooking us then?" Yumichika scolded, blowing holes in his theory.

"I can't cook myself, dumbass. You're not even bite-sized, you chicken-wing." Yumichika made a noise of offense, but Ikkaku ignored him, feeling confident all of a sudden. Maybe talking to someone about this really had helped. He nabbed little Yumichika and stood up, not concerned with the burning. In fact, he couldn't even really feel it anymore. He walked over the slick black metal, feet not even feeling the sizzling grease as he made it right up to the frying pan handle. After taking a moment to crack his knuckles, he jumped on it, catapulting the bacon and the frying oil right out of it. He had to wonder who had flipped him over with that huge spatula, because he didn't see Hisagi or any other giant chef anywhere near them.

"What did you do that for?" Yumichika crossed his arms in a huff as Ikkaku picked them up off of the floor, walking out of the large kitchen.

"I dunno', it was fun." As he wandered around the unfamiliar house, it began getting smaller and smaller, until he was just the right size. He didn't see any people, and eventually he made his way outside to a scary dark forest.

"Oh great, you worked something out, didn't you... You broke through your denial," Yumichika mumbled, going pale. "I knew this night would come. That means that _he'll_ be coming."

"Where are we?" Ikkaku asked, in awe of the terrifying-looking place. If he got lucky, he could probably find some super tough guys in there. Those would be _awesome_ fights!

"What?"

"I said, 'where are we'."

"_The heart of the matter_," Yumichika said ominously, pointing towards a signpost that was at the entrance to the woods.

Once Ikkaku read it, he knew that this would be the final task, and it was gonna' be a clusterfuck.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4: How to fuck up the 'buddy' system.

* * *

"The heart of the matter?"

"Yes, sadly, you heard right. This isn't good."

"What do you mean?" Ikkaku asked Yumichika, strolling closer to the rather ominous unevenly cut signpost.

"You keep causing the dreams to reset. When you wake up you shake off your dreams like they aren't real and like the things you learn mean nothing."

"Dreams _aren't_ real, they're all a stupid story that my own mind's making up. They don't have _meaning._"

"Why would that mean that they aren't real? Is love fake too? Or anger? These are all products of our minds, stupid chemical reactions that make people kill others and slit their wrists. Isn't _that_ real, Ikkaku?" Yumichika asked quietly, looking a little sad.

Yumichika was right. Oxytocin made people who've been intimate feel attached to one another, it made mothers love their children, even though they are no more special than a frog egg amongst millions of others. Chemicals create those intense emotions that seem so real; They make people lie and swear and wallow in misery. They make people start _wars, _and if none of it was real, how could it all cause so much damage?

Ikkaku didn't know what to say. Yumichika had never gotten like this before.

"You wake up and just go about your business, Ikkaku, ignoring _everything_ I've told you, and now you're being forced to learn from your mistakes. If only there had been another way... I didn't want it to come to this," Yumichika said a little absently. "You know I have to suffer with you when these stupid dreams of yours turn into nightmares. You think that they don't terrify me too? My god, the things your mind can come up with, it's any wonder I haven't wet myself yet."

Ikkaku sighed, scratching at the back of his neck, still reading the sign in an attempt to convince himself that Yumichika was wrong and that this was just another pun his brain had come up with, which made no sense, because he wasn't good with wordplay, and how could his own mind be able to outwit him? Usually when others told jokes or said things that he shouldn't know in dreams, it caused a glitch in the dreamscape and he would wake up, because everything here was supposed to be a creation of his own mind, just random neurons firing in his brain as he slept.

"Why do you keep staring at that sign, can't you read it?" Yumichika asked with curiosity, still trying to wipe bacon grease out of his hair before it solidified into white glop. Ikkaku was glad that he'd dropped his dreary philosophical mood. Ikkaku hated contemplating his own existence, because it made him feel horribly insignificant and out-of-control of his own actions. Like that 'fate' shit. Puh. Fate could kiss his ass.

Why did everything have to be caused by something else, or influenced by fate or god or the magic-eight-ball Ichigo kept in his room? Couldn't he make decisions just because? _He_ was in control; he wasn't some marionette, forever a puppet to some invisible force's will. _That_ was real. Him, right now, Madarame Ikkaku.

"Hm?" Yumichika asked again, not realizing just yet that Ikkaku was getting all soul-searchy, still thinking he was struggling with reading the sign. "It says 'heart of the-"

"No, I can read it just fine." Ikkaku rolled his eyes, coming back to reality... or something like that. "I was just-"

"Caught in your stupid emotional labyrinth again?" Perhaps Yumichika knew more than he let on, which pissed Ikkaku off. He _hated_ feeling like he was the only one who was confused.

"Okay, listen, you little brat-"

"Shh, no time!" Yumichika shouted, indicating that he needed to hurry and enter the dark and foreboding wood. He suddenly looked quite fearful, tugging on Ikkaku's collar, clinging to his neck, urging him to start walking. "You need to hurry and enter the Bewilderness. Someone's following us."

Had Ikkaku not been intent on following Yumichika's order, he may have been stunned by that little pun and then sarcastically thought something along the lines of 'The Bewilderness? Oh, ha-ha, very clever.' He may have wondered why this had appeared, because he probably wouldn't have been able to think that one up on his own, and then he may have further wondered how on earth his own brain could be smarter than him? He might have then thought that maybe it had something to do with dream-Yumichika being smarter than him too.

But he hadn't and he didn't, because he was too focused on doing what he'd been asked. If whatever was following them was scaring Yumichika, he probably didn't want to meet it.

Ikkaku entered the wood without question at first, trying to not let the facts that the path was overrun and hard to see and that it seemed like he might not come out of there alive bother him too much. This was no ordinary forest; it was indeed _wilderness, _with scary looking trees and many tangled bushes and brambles. Along with that, there were many other strange objects that were out of place in a forest, such as human world items, books with shredded pages, and other things from his own memories, such as old blood-stained academy uniforms, familiar sake bottles, and Yachiru's dollies. Rangiku's precious necklace was even hanging from a high branch. All in all, it looked as though his brain had thrown all of its junk into this forest.

"Wait, _who _did you say was following us?"

"Believe me, you don't want to meet him," Yumichika said, looking frightened, cheeks pale. "Just keep going." Ikkaku nodded, ducking under branches that grew out over the path and stepping over protuding roots and weeds that were tangled up with splintered wood and glass-dust. He recognized Yumichika's favorite vase that he'd accidentally broken almost twenty years ago, still feeling a guilty jolt as it crackled under his feet. "Oh, and one more thing. Try not to let anyone else get me; you'd be _lost _without me, and then you'd never get out of here." Ikkaku withheld a snide comment about Yumichika's arrogance.

"Where's 'here'?" Ikkaku asked, slapping a bug that had bit his shoulder, nearly hurling Yumichika into the dark bushes on the edge of the path as he did so. Things were becoming frighteningly realistic. He didn't usually feel itching or pain in his dreams, or other physical sensations, but he could feel his clothes against his body and the meager weight of Yumichika on his shoulder. Furthermore, he could feel the glass shards crunching under his heels, and an unmistakable wave of nausea rose up through him as he lurched forward over a rotting log that was caked with dirt and term papers from his failed kidou-class. It was beginning to disturb him to be honest, the way he could smell the forest, hear the birds, and feel the mugginess and slight breeze.

"I told you. We've reached 'the heart of the matter'," Yumichika said sincerely, with an air of reluctant patience that one would use on a child that incessantly asked 'why'.

Ikkaku frowned at him. "Yeah, but that's just a phrase. It's not a real _place,_" he insisted. Yumichika just looked at him in confusion and with that expression people get when they think that you've said something awkward or crazy: furrowed or raised eyebrows, slight disgust, slowly looking off to one side with pursed lips. Ikkaku frowned deeper, stopping and looking around. The walls should be flickering and warping because he had just acknowledged that this was a dream out loud, but nothing was happening.

"Ikkaku, do you see that?" Yumichika pointed towards something in the distance, holding another hand above his eyes in an attempt to make his vision sharper. No, Ikkaku didn't see it, whatever _it_ was, because he was busy being confused about why he hadn't awakened yet when they'd verbally acknowledged that he was asleep - that, and he was trying to beat away mosquitoes.

"Do I see what?"

"No, do you see _that_?" Ikkaku ignored Yumichika's nonsense, following the direction of Yumichika's gesture with his eyes. "That looks like Hozukimaru! Go and fetch him."

Sure enough, up in the far distance, right where the path forked and took a sharp left turn one way and continued straight in the other, Hozukimaru was stabbed into the side of a tree at an odd angle. It took Ikkaku some great effort to pull out because it was really stuck in there, as if someone had lined it up with the trunk and pounded it in with a mallet; he had to set Yumichika down for fear of flinging him into the dark shrubbery.

It was a tree without flaky bark, and was much smaller than the other trees, which wasn't saying much because Ikkaku still couldn't reach all the way around it were he to try. He braced his leg up against the dense unforgiving wood, not even caring that he was pulling hard enough that he would fall on his ass once he got it loose.

Ikkaku finally yanked his sword free, falling down as he had anticipated: with a heavy thud that jarred his vision and possibly cracked his tailbone. As pain shot up his spine and through his hips, he got up with a few colorful words and some horrible aching in his back.

He held his sword up to his eyes, really intent on observing just how detailed his dream had become. The blade of his katana was sharp and shiny, with blood encrusted on it as usual. It even had some of Yumichika's hair - back from when it had been long - worked into the hilt, just as it was on the original zanpakutou. The realism was furthered when he saw the chipped edge near the middle of the blade where he'd nearly been killed fighting a hollow that liked throwing rocks.

Then he wondered why Yumichika's sword hadn't appeared as well; this bothered him a little, even if Yumichika was clearly too small to use it. Come to think of it, there was always something up with Yumichika's sword in his dreams. Either it was absent, in a impossible-to-reach place, or Yumichika was just having trouble with it. Ikkaku could vaguely remember one point where he'd found Yumichika trying to lift up his own sword, which was still normal-sized while its owner was tiny. Ikkaku could remember snatching it, and he had teased Yumichika about his height when Yumichika demanded that he give it back.

It was just strange, and he couldn't put his finger on why this would be a reappearing thing in his dreams.

Ikkaku looked around a little, trying to see if maybe Yumichika's sword had just fallen, or had been covered in dead leaves or other debris, or maybe was miniature to fit Yumichika's small stature, but no such luck. He sighed, leaning back against a conveniently placed sign-post... Wait, _a signpost?_

Ikkaku turned to read it, fingers on his chin. The left path led to the 'sad-lands', which he assumed were basically the badlands of the Rukongai, and the straight path led to... "The... Bewilderness? Oh good, we're going the right way." Now that he had time to think about it, it finally occurred to him that the name was a little strange. "Is that a pun? I think it's a pun. Hey, Yum-" He turned around to ask Yumichika if that had been word-play, or just to gloat that he'd been wrong about it being 'the heart of the matter', but Yumichika wasn't where he'd left him.

In fact, Yumichika wasn't there _at all_ anymore.

Ikkaku just blinked for a second, wondering if Yumichika had hidden just to scare him into watching him better, but it didn't seem like something he'd do, even if Yumichika was occasionally petty.

Suddenly, with an extremely loud metallic rattle, Shuuhei Hisagi front-flipped out of a chain-laden tree and landed in front of him, taking off down the path without a word. Ikkaku blinked once, mouth open, and then tore ass after him, trying to remind himself that if he talked to him too much, he may lose his precious lucidity and rational thought.

He didn't, however, think to call Yumichika just to make sure he wasn't still in the immediate area. He assumed that Hisagi had swiped Yumichika just like always, and the possibility that he might be wrong didn't even cross his mind.

"Hey!" he shouted. "Get back here! Wait up!" Hisagi was running super-fast, and Ikkaku thought it might be because he thought Shuuhei had an _insanely_ better chance getting Yumichika out on a date than he did. Shuuhei Hisagi was miles ahead of him when it came to romance, and there was no way for him to catch up.

It finally occurred to him that the reason talking to Hisagi here warped his perception was because in real life, whenever he talked to Hisagi he just got so damn irritated and flustered for no reason. They didn't have much in common and had codes of alignment that were extremely different, but Ikkaku had remembered when they'd been friends and part of him missed it. Now that he was a rival for Yumichika's affections, Ikkaku had forgotten that they were bros.

He pledged that when he caught Hisagi, he would only punch him a couple times.

Eventually, when Hisagi was no longer in sight, he slowed down, panting, trying to catch his breath. He shouldn't be tired. This was all an illusion; he shouldn't be out of breath or have aching lungs or still feel intense pain from where his lower back had hit the ground earlier.

"Fuck," he swore, kicking a tree in anger. Yumichika had seriously _just_ warned him not to let him out of his sight. This happened every damn night - Yumichika getting kidnapped, abducted, spirited away, etc. It happened all the time, but still Ikkaku never seemed to learn, and he hated feeling so dense. Worst of all, Yumichika was right yet again.

God damnit.

He started to walk some more, hoping that he might come upon Yumichika again by sheer luck, or something like that. Yumichika would probably show up _eventually._

After about five minutes of traversing the dense inhospitable path, he made it to another fork in the road, which gave him two options: One, to the 'orchasms', which Ikkaku assumed were chasms that have something to do with orgasms, or two, to 'the thinking place'... or was it '_stinking_ place?'... He couldn't quite make it out, since the sign-post had nearly rotted right off its nails.

After deciding that smelling bad was better than going to some weird chasms that he really had no idea about, he set off, noticing that the wood was growing sparser, with more patches of sunlight peeking in through the canopy. The path turned slowly to gravel, mixed in with glass bits and the occasional hypodermic needle, so Ikkaku stepped carefully even though he had on sandals. Soon enough, he came upon a bright clearing that held a cute little cottage with a pair of giant scissors that had been modified into a chimney on its roof.

It was either a barber-shop or a chop-shop, and neither sounded pleasant. Hopefully Yumichika was in there, because Ikkaku was sure that finding him would be the only thing to make entering this building worth it.

After knocking, he peeked his head inside, surprised to see Nemu Kurotsuchi styling Nanao's hair with a big smile on her face and with lots of chatter coming from her mouth.

He quickly flicked his eyes over the surroundings: crooked black and white tiles, hair on the floor, spray bottles, and a wall with a continuous counter and a mirror above it. Nothing really threatening, but a little creepy because of the dust, plaster bits, and the broken lightbulb. It looked like the place hadn't been cleaned in ages, which made no sense, because the girls looked like they were having fun and had been here a while. Maybe they were ghosts, forever reenacting their deaths or something.

He cleared his throat to announce his arrival. When they didn't seem to notice it, he spoke. "Hey, have you guys seen Yumichika?" Nanao turned her head to look at him, and Nemu looked into the large cracked mirror, meeting his eyes with an expression so vibrant and life-filled that Ikkaku had a desire to befriend the real Nemu and do something nice for her, something small. It really was a shame that she was always so dreary and creepy. She just needed someone to be even a _little_ nice to her and show her that there was life other than that of pleasing her never-impressed father.

"Yeah, several times."

"Recently, I mean," Ikkaku clarified, and Nanao pursed her lips, looking like she was thinking, or maybe it was that crazy-look again. Ikkaku was used to people thinking he was nuts, given that he was aware that the manic smile he got during fights was probably a little disturbing, but this was just downright frustrating - _he_ was the only sane one here, so why were people always acting like his rationality was like verbal vomit?

"Yeah, yep, mhm. Try the attic," Nanao said in a thoughtful tone. Nemu pointed to the rickety stairs in the corner of the hair-styling shop, to clarify Nanao's suggestion. Ikkaku checked the attic, but no Yumichika - just a bunch of bats. "Okay, try the basement," Nanao then suggested, looking more sure of herself that time.

Ikkaku crossed his arms, tapping his foot when Yumichika didn't show up in the basement either. "Look, do you know or not? I'm in a ru-"

"Try that closet," Nemu said with a smile that Ikkaku had never seen the like of on the real Nemu's face. Ikkaku conceded and checked the closet, immediately getting a floppy Hisagi tumbling out onto him with a bunch of hair dye packets, Yumichika in hand.

"Glad to see you're normal-sized, now," Ikkaku said.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Hisagi replied, staring up at him from where he was spread-eagle on the ground.

Yumichika pulled himself out of Hisagi's hand and started scaling Ikkaku's pant leg, until Ikkaku picked him up sheepishly, a little red from the embarrassment of not following Yumichika's suggestion to watch him carefully.

Ikkaku was persuaded to sit down in one of the twirly barber-chairs, and he was so occupied with getting Yumichika somewhere comfortable where he could see him easily that he didn't notice Hisagi leave, or perhaps just disappear.

"You need a hair cut," Nemu said, putting a finger to her chin in thought, as if she was envisioning which style hair cut to give him. Ikkaku's face soured, temper flaring. "Hm, Hm, Hmmmmmmm, you _definitely_ need a hair cut."

Ikkaku just blinked at her, straight-faced._ 'Thin ice, thin ice, thin ice.'_

"You need a hair cut... You need to cut your hair... hair cut, cut your hair," she continued choppily, making a little picture frame with her hands. Yumichika rolled his eyes.

"Ikkaku, just-"

"_I don't have hair, okay? I do NOT need a hair cut!_" Ikkaku shouted at her in ire, then gritting his teeth hard enough to be in danger of cracking them.

Nemu nodded as if he had turned down her request calmly. "Well, in that case." Ikkaku grabbed Nemu's wrist just in time before she cut his throat with the scissors. He'd always thought she'd been a little creepy along with her repressed submissive personality - but that probably had just come from Kurotsuchi.

"Close shave," Yumichika commented, yawning.

"Shut your mouth," Ikkaku snapped in response to the cliché, snatching him up and bursting out of the demented barber shop before the two girls could strap him down and do unspeakably horrible things to him, like making him try on itchy wigs.

After running for a few minutes, he finally slowed down to a brisk walk, passing another sign that pointed him towards what was known as the 'thinking place'. "What the hell was that about?"

"I _told_ you this is the heart of the matter, so obviously you're just going to have to work through your problems. You'd better get used to working things out on your own, because I'm not always going to be here."

"The hell does _that_ mean?"

"It means that you're stuck here until you find the center of the maze." At this point, Ikkaku was used to Yumichika completely changing the subject by answering with things that had nothing to do with his question.

"Holy fuck, this is a maze?" Ikkaku asked incredulously, the facts that Yumichika was going to abandon him and that he was unable to awaken pushed to the back of his mind for now.

"Yes, it's that big," Yumichika commented in response to Ikkaku's shocked face.

"And I can't wake up?"

"Right."

"I just have to solve a problem like usual, right? And then someone'll wake me up like always."

"_No._ It's like I said: Until you navigate the maze, you can't wake up. This is in real time, Ikkaku." Ikkaku's eyes boggled and his mouth opened and closed uselessly. Minutes that passed by here were real? "You'll be stuck here until either you fix this, or your body dies. So you have however long you think they'll keep you on life-support." Ikkaku began panicking.

"They'll think I'm in a coma! What the hell kind of problems do I have to work through? Is this like that sick game that puppet plays in the living world movie to make people appreciate their lives? Fuck-"

"We'll make it," Yumichika comments. "You'll probably have to rescue me quite a few more times, so get used to having to make decisions on your own. It must be the only way you'll learn."

Ikkaku sulked as he walked through a small town in the middle of the woods. Many of the people he'd met or simply seen throughout his life time were there, giving him directions that Yumichika said were wrong. Of course he got pissy, because the people sounded like they knew what they were talking about, but Yumichika _insisted_ that they were only there to throw them off track.

"What, so everything here is just a test, except you? How do I know _you're_ not fake?" Yumichika looked at him as if he'd asked a really smart question.

"You're thinking too hard about imaginary problems. You need to focus on what's real," he said stoically.

Ikkaku shook his head a little desperately, thinking that Yumichika was just talking more nonsense. In distress over his bad situation, while wondering what on earth was happening to his physical body, he walked along the path that kept winding and going up hills and down. Eventually, things thickened back into dense forest once again, along with debris that seemed post-apocalyptic. It reminded Ikkaku of the rubbish piles that often followed a Rukon district catching fire.

"But I don't know how, I need help, Yumichika," he said miserably, stepping over fallen trees and moss-covered stones, squeezing through the trunks that crossed over the path in a big 'x'. Broken glass crunched under his feet, and he noticed other things, like splintered wood from crates that had fallen out of a net that was still hanging overhead.

He recognized the symbol that was always on those boxes he found near Renji - Yumichika had once told him that Renji dealt in weapons in so-and-so town. Now, when Ikkaku thought of weapons, wakizashi, senbon, and other sharp blades came to his mind, but Yumichika had suggested it was more along the lines of explosives. The boxes had probably carried fireworks or grenades or gunpowder or something.

There was a child's doll stuck in a bush, along with coins and barbed-wire fragments sticking up out of the ground. Some of it was stuff that he recognized, and others he only vaguely remembered. He kept walking a little ways, pushing tree branches up and out of the way of his face, dodging some grimy bottles that had been hung like ornaments from some high tree-limbs. He sat in frustration on another crate of explosives that had been kept intact and shoved up next to a tree. Ikkaku exhaled in defeat.

"I don't know what to do- Yumichika?" He looked around him in a circle, suddenly realizing that the path was gone, not even able to tell which way he had come from. The tree 'x' he'd just come through seemed to have disappeared, turning into just another dark backdrop, typical of dense forest.

"Fuck, where'd you go?" he whined in dismay, checking under each of his feet again, getting down on his hands and knees to see if Yumichika had fallen from his shoulder. He was getting fucking _pissed off_. The dreamscape was _cheating_, messing with his head and doing things that made no sense at all! Usually things kept to at least a _moderate_ modicum of rationality.

Ikkaku started panicking at that point, scrambling around on the ground, looking for Yumichika. No, he couldn't be left here alone, _stuck_ forever, never able to go back to his real life. What if he died once his body did? What if his consciousness slowly faded away and he started becoming some wacky nut who lived in the Wonderland of other people's dreams?

The dirt was real underneath his fingernails, the rough ground was _real_ under his knees and palms. This world wasn't pixelated or blurry or surreal; everything was so perfectly life-like that he didn't know what to do. "This is a dream," he shouted, standing up. "Wake up, c'mon. _Wake up!_" He tried screaming, pinching himself, imagining something completely ridiculous to see if it would cause a glitch, but no such luck, once again. "Wake up, you're asleep," he said miserably, losing hope.

Nothing happened, and Ikkaku sat down in shock.

Yumichika was right, or at least his sick-dream-copy of Yumichika was right. He was stuck here. This wasn't one of those dream tasks where he would take up where he'd left off the next time he took a nap. _No_. He really honestly could not leave, and would remain asleep until he fixed shit.

Damn that Yumichika, leaving him when he needed help. Ikkaku had always somehow deluded himself into thinking that Yumichika's dream-clone really was part of the real Yumichika, but now he wasn't so sure. Was it just another dream-shade that had been projected by his own mind? If that was true, then how could Yumichika be smarter than him here? At one point, his little helper had shown him how to cheat the dreamscape and get what he wanted out of it, but he didn't remember how, and now he was hopelessly lost somewhere between the Bewilderness, that demonic hair salon, and the thinking place.

How hard he wished that Yumichika would come back to him, not even caring if it was just a random firing of neurons in his brain, because as far as he was concerned - and according to Yumichika-two - he _had_ no body anymore. The thing Yumichika always complained about - Ikkaku 'calling' him - wasn't working either, and Ikkaku began to feel helpless.

He couldn't wake up, and his guide had gone once again. He didn't know _what_ he was supposed to be doing or where he needed to go. How on earth had Yumichika expected him to keep track of him if he was just gonna' disappear out of the blue like that? Was he supposed to hold Yumichika in his hand and keep him in eyeshot at all times? Even _that_ didn't seem to be working. He sighed, leaning back against a tree in misery, before deciding to keep following the path, hoping he could find _somebody_, even if their advice was completely wrong.

There was no point wasting time feeling sorry for himself. There wouldn't even _be_ a 'himself' if he didn't get a move on.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5: How to 'speak now' at a wedding ceremony. Holding your peace is optional

* * *

Ikkaku stumbled, searching desperately as he wondered about Yumichika's realism. Was this really just his own mind? Maybe Yumichika kept disappearing because he was afraid of the real one leaving him if he found out about his love-crush. But that couldn't be right - Yumichika just couldn't be fake.

Part of Ikkaku still believed that the real Yumichika was trying to tell him something through these nightmares, that his little Yumichika-doll had some fragment of the real Yumichika's soul or consciousness in it, because he didn't think that he could create such a perfect copy of Yumichika, given how poorly of a job he'd done on his other friends.

Hisagi was either screaming 'deadlines' or acting like a six-year-old, Renji couldn't talk and sometimes got extremely creepy, turning his dreams to nightmares, and Kira was a 'mess', whatever that meant. Rangiku had her own problems, Yachiru was a psychopath, and his Captain was a dope who followed her around. They were all messed up somehow, but Yumichika was always crystal-clear, _always_ perfect, always identical to the real one.

It just _couldn't_ be his own mind making things up. Yumichika was real.

_'Isn't __that__ real, Ikkaku?'_

_'You're thinking too hard about imaginary problems. You need to focus on what's real. Real. Real. Real.'_

Even if his mind was just making up Yumichika, the brat knew what he was talking about. He was still necessary; Ikkaku could figure out how this was possible later.

"Okay, okay, gotta' findja', gotta' findja'," he muttered, shuffling along, looking all over, still thinking he might've just dropped Yumichika in a bush or something. Maybe Yumichika was sulking and giving him the silent treatment, or maybe the fall had killed him.

He observed the surroundings, still pissed that the path had suddenly disappeared, leaving him in the thick of the Bewilderness. After a few minutes of difficult traversing, he decided that he should withhold from the temptation of using Hozukimaru as a machete to cut the vines or small branches; for some reason he had a feeling something bad would happen.

So he suffered with it, stuffing his sword down his shirt as he army-crawled through a thicket and a few thorn bushes, coming out onto a dirty clearing with grass that had grown extremely tall from lack of care. He swore a couple of times, since his face had been badly scratched and there was dirt all down his front. Ikkaku noticed pulled his sword out of his shirt, wincing from where it had cut his chest when he'd lain on it. This place... it seemed like it was someone's _yard._

An unkempt yard to a very creepy run-down house, which he decided not to enter. It looked haunted, if haunted buildings had a 'look'. This did not keep him from staring at it for a while, walking around it a couple of times, trying to avoid the debris and rubble that was becoming more frequent. It was becoming so frequent in fact, that Ikkaku assumed that it was more junk than forest now, and that perhaps he had come across a junkyard that had been abandoned long enough for greenery to grow.

Too many of Renji, Ichigo, and Yumichika's things from his long forgotten memories were popping up. There were wilting flowers Hisagi had brought to Yumichika, tickets to Ichigo's 'amusement parks', Renji's worn textbooks that the poor guy had _slaved_ over trying to impress Rukia's brother. He'd even spotted Yachiru's tattered security blanket stuck up in some branches like a kite.

He approached the creepy building, wading through the tall grass, wary of snakes. God _damnit_, the snakes in his nightmares were fucking scary, taking his phobia up a few notches. He ran his fingers along the side of the house, getting a sliver almost immediately from the poor quality of the wood. The paint had all but flaked off of the house and the wood was splintery and cracked. The shutters hung off the windows, which were all punched out or cracked. After a quick peek in one of the window holes, he saw that it was dark, dusty, and frankly too creepy for him to enter, even though he wasn't a chicken.

He didn't feel like lingering near the building; he was scheduled to find the 'thinking place' about now. Even if he couldn't stay, he enjoyed the clearing in the woods, in which he could see the sky if he looked up. It was light enough that he could easily pick out what items were strewn along the ground, which was a nice change from dark dreary greenery which his eyes had to strain against.

There was a burlap sack half buried in the ground, which he tried to brush off, even though the dirt had been packed into the fabric. He pulled it up, getting a few worms, some grass that had grown through the cloth, and some darker moister soil too. Again, he was startled by the realism, almost forgetting that this was supposed to be a dream.

Maybe that was the whole point. Maybe this_ wasn't_ a dream anymore. Maybe since he'd left his body, he had come to this place and now couldn't leave it. Ikkaku tried to ponder what Yumichika had said, knowing that even if it sounded like nonsense, usually the things he said ended up being right or true.

"It should be night-time," he said aloud, testing whether or not he might be able to break free or change something about his surroundings, but no. He was certain he'd gone to sleep during the night-time back in Seireitei, so if this was happening on real time, then it should be night here too.

Perhaps it was reversed.

"Parallel universe or something."

"No," someone said behind him. It was a voice that he didn't hear often, but one that he recognized immediately. There was no mistaking the 'holier-than-thou' - or perhaps '_smarter_-than-thou' - tone, or the ironic rasp that cigarettes gave to the voice of someone who you'd think would be more health-conscious.

"Akon?" He turned around, but didn't see the scientist anywhere. He could vaguely remember that the last time he'd seen Akon in a dream, he'd been a recluse.

"Perpendicular."

"What?"

"Perpendicular universe." Okay, that had clarified nothing.

"I don't know _what_ you're talking about," Ikkaku said in relief that he was no longer alone, but still was unable to tell where the voice was coming from. Geez, he always felt like a complete moron around Akon; maybe he'd transcended into some omniscient being in his dreams.

"It doesn't matter if there are parallel universes, because we would never know. Parallel lines are those that run equal to each other, never crossing, never meeting, never changing shape. They're identical. There's no point in wondering about them or speculating, because it wouldn't matter. Like time travel."

Ikkaku picked up his filthy new rucksack and put his sword inside it, apologizing to Hozukimaru for the smell and the rough quality of the burlap. He put in some broken pieces of glass and some yellowed paper, along with what looked like a bent axle, just in case his dreams turned to nightmares and things got ugly.

Strange. It had never occurred to him before to use objects around his dream to help him escape. The surroundings had never seemed stable enough before for him to bother gathering supplies. Perhaps the thought had come to him because of how real everything was now. He seemed to be locked into lucidity or rational thought, because he hadn't yet forgotten that he was asleep, and hadn't been really pulled off track because of a short attention span. Everything was rock-solid real.

_'I wonder why everything's busted.'_ He picked up a box of toothpicks that turned out to be matches, which he didn't know how to use. It had freaked him out the first time he'd seen Ichigo use one. He kept them anyways, along with some dirty water containers filled with sand and mud.

"Perpendicular lines however, are completely opposite to each other, racing towards one another, and only... meeting... once," Akon's voice lowered dramatically. Ikkaku furrowed his brow, pinpointing the direction of the voice, walking towards the porch of the run-down shack.

He tried to open the door, but the thing wasn't attached to the hinges, so he settled on tossing it to the side. The rotted wood split and fell apart when it landed on the porch, held up a bit by the cushion of rose bushes that were growing up through gaps in the floorboards. "Akon, what the hell are you doing?" he asked the grubby scientist who had been crouching behind the door, speaking through a paper cone to sound more ominous.

Okay, so maybe he thought Akon was a genius, but knew that he wasn't as socially adept as he thought he was. There was also that incident with his teeth...

"So it's a pendulum universe, thanks for clearing that up." Akon groaned at his idiocy, correcting him in a mumble, and Ikkaku noticed that his horns were a bit longer than they should be, and that his skin was a bit grayer as well. "Are you a vampire or something?"

"How'd you guess?" Now that he was close by, Ikkaku could see bite marks all over Akon's visible skin, and he could see that where Akon's vampire canines should be, there were no teeth at all. Perhaps he'd transferred his fangs to his head, which wouldn't make sense because those would have been some huge teeth... oohh, he could feel a nightmare coming on.

Things should have gotten darker, his gut should have twisted, and a jump-score should have played, but nothing happened, and Ikkaku hated how well he could smell the stench of decay in this old house, and how he could feel a slight breeze, and how he could hear crickets in the distance. It was just plain creepy, and wasn't being played up or made scarier by his own imagination. Everything was all too real.

"You're not hungry, are you?" he asked warily.

"No, I'm Akon," Akon said straight-faced, and Ikkaku honestly didn't know if he was joking. He suddenly remembered that he shouldn't be talking too much to nonsensical dream-wraiths, but he hadn't really had Akon play a large role in any of his dreams before, so he wanted to see if the scientist could help him a little. Akon was smart, he could probably-

Wait, _Renji!_ He needed to find Renji. Renji _always_ helped him. It was a shame that he couldn't talk, and even more so that he turned vicious on what almost seemed like a time-limit.

"Have you seen Renji?"

"Many times, many times," Akon said a little too excitedly, cringing away from the light coming in the doorway. When Ikkaku explained once again that he meant _recently,_ Akon rolled his eyes, saying that it had been a joke.

"He's dealing in weapons these days. Fireworks. Guarding."

"Guarding?"

"Yes," Akon said with no further clarification. Ikkaku sighed, letting Akon chatter to him about how Urahara Kisuke - who Akon seemed to have a strange level of hero-worship for, almost equal to Hisagi's for Kensei - had been whisked away to a partition of hell by Kurotsuchi, who Akon didn't seem to like for some reason.

Ikkaku had had one dream with Urahara Kisuke in it, and the man had been _frighteningly_ sane. He didn't want to meet him again here, even though he had a huge amount of respect and admiration towards him.

"Aw fuck, I've gotta' go through hell ta' get through this?" Ikkaku asked loudly. "You hate me, don't you?" he shouted at the sky, as if daring God to come hit him with a lightning bolt so he could die here and by so doing, wake up.

"Maybe God won't hate you so much if you'd quit screaming at him," Akon suggested. "I mean, if he's up there. I dunno'."

"Akon, _where is Renji?_" Ikkaku asked slowly, taking the man's shoulders.

"He's nearby," Akon said after a moment of thinking and nodding to himself. "I saw him squeezing charcoal earlier. I think he's trying for diamonds... and also... look out for the man in the moon." Ikkaku sighed to himself, thanking him, but didn't turn his back on him as he moved off the porch to the far end of the clearing. He had a feeling of dread starting to build in his gut.

Akon seemed to fade, backing into the recesses of his run-down haunted-house. There was a sharp crack, as Akon's body twisted unnaturally. Ikkaku's fists clenched and his jaw tensed as he moved through some bushes into the darkness of the forest, looking back at Akon, whose eyes had seemed to turn to molten lava.

Suddenly Akon's body jolted forward, jaw unhinging, eyes bulging like some demon from a human movie - those things freaked Ikkaku out. He looked as if he were screaming his head off, and with an audible snap of bone, flames shot from his eyes and mouth, setting the dry brittle wood of the house ablaze. It was a conflagration in a matter of seconds.

Ikkaku stood watching the fireball hit the sky, rising out of control in a pillar of molten flame. He stood still in horror for a moment, before he continued on through the woods, a little shaky. Seeing Akon's face snap open like a gulper eel had fucked him up.

The revelation came to him in a sudden burst, that_ that_ had been the 'thinking place'. Ikkaku shuddered, walking for a good ten minutes without stopping, eager to get away from there.

Soon enough, the empty and destroyed boxes of explosives became more frequent, so much so that it was as if he were walking over woodchips instead of packed forest dirt.

He stopped short when he heard a noise, as if something had swiped through the air next to his head, almost like a sword narrowly missing his ear.

"Renji?" he whispered, really creeped out. What if Renji tried to kill him? He'd done it before. Ikkaku took out his sword slowly, dismayed. Hopefully it didn't come to blows. Renji was always helpful and sweet, eager to be friendly, and he seemed sane enough too, despite those violent outbursts.

Ikkaku had never killed anyone here besides Yumichika, and he didn't want to see what would happen if he did. He didn't want to have to remember Renji's dying breath every time he saw the real Renji. For the first time in his life, he decided that if it came to them fighting, he was going to make a run for it.

"Renji?" he called louder, feeling cornered from all sides. He turned around and around, backing himself up against a tree, body tensed and ready to bolt. Frick, he wished Yumichika was there to give him a little help right about then.

He startled when a dark shape moved in a tree a little ways off of the path, like somebody had flipped upside down and was hanging by their knees from a branch. There were eyes, glowing eyes that were looking right at him. "Renji, is that you?" he called, tightening his grip on his sword. Goosebumps rose on his arms and he swallowed, breath shaky.

Of course, Renji couldn't answer him, being mute, and the shape slowly climbed through the tree branches, coming closer and lower, until Ikkaku could see that it was indeed Renji. The man peeped at him from behind some leaves, almost looking frightened of him. Ikkaku suddenly remembered how much Renji liked to hide. It was almost as if he were shy of the other people wandering around at times.

Once Renji recognized him, he crawled out onto a branch, perching on it barefoot, waving down at him with a grin.

"Hey, man," Ikkaku said in relief, putting his sword back in the bag, keeping it in quick reach in case Renji got out of control. He could see a wakizashi glittering where it was strapped to Renji's belt.

Renji made a gesture for him to talk, so Ikkaku took it to mean that he wanted to know what was going on with him.

"I lost Yumichika," he said flatly. Renji snorted, rolling his eyes. "Ya' know where he is?" Renji frowned for a moment, before wiggling a hand from side to side, in a 'so-so' gesture. "So you know where he could be?" Renji nodded, and Ikkaku was pleased that he'd guessed right. Usually Renji's sherade games and riddles were too complicated for him to guess - which was ridiculous, because it was supposed to be his own mind coming up with the puzzles.

_Damn_, was he lucky tonight; he hardly _ever_ found Renji. That scare he'd been given was well worth it.

"Can ya' come down?" Renji opened his mouth as if to say something, and then clung tight to the tree trunk, as if he were afraid something would get him the moment he came down. "I mean, ya' don't have to, but..." Renji looked indecisive for a few moments, before he began to grapple the tree trunk, slowly climbing down it to a reasonable height that he could jump to the ground from. Ikkaku frowned. Renji had been really high up there.

Renji hissed and rubbed his feet where they'd hit the sharp woodchips, pulling splinters out, sitting down like a little kid putting on socks. Ikkaku sat down across from him, waiting for him to be done fretting over his bleeding feet. He probably wouldn't be able to climb very well after that. Ikkaku cringed in guilt.

"So, you think you know where Yumichika _might_ be?" Renji nodded, looking eager to be helpful as he held up a hand, showing that he was beginning the game.

"Alright, start." Renji nodded, thinking for a moment before laying one hand flat, using the other to look like it was holding a saucer or a tea cup, setting it on his flat hand. "Uhhh... Set." Renji made a keep-going motion. "Put down, uh, place?" Renji nodded, smiling.

"Oh, a place, okay. So yer' telling me the place where he's at?" Renji again made a so-so motion. "Okay, okay, the place he _might_ be at. Ya' gonna' take me there?" Renji nodded hesitantly, not wanting to leave his hiding place or his barrage of hodge-podge weapons, of which Ikkaku had seen none so far - just the broken crates that carried them.

Renji held up two fingers. "Two words... first word, uhhh..." Renji thought for about thirty seconds before winking and pointing at his eye.

"Eye." Renji nodded, grinning, going on to the next hint. "Second word, uh..." Renji made a gesture like he was getting sleep-sand out of his eye. "Eye crud..." Renji made a keep-going motion, "Uhhh, eye boogers, eye goo-" Renji pointed frantically, nodding, then making a motion to his ear like he was listening for something.

"Sounds like 'eye goo'?" Renji nodded, seeming really happy that he was guessing things so easily. Usually they'd be at this for a long time. "Okay, eye joo, eye boo, eye do-" Renji grabbed his shoulders.

"Eye do... I do? Like people getting married?" Renji fist-pumped, grinning. "I don't get it... A place... I do... Uhh... A wedding chapel?" Renji pinched a forefinger and thumb together. "Close? Uhhh... A church." Renji spread his hands apart. "A big church. Cathedral? A wedding at a cathedral?" Renji nodded, satisfied.

"What does that have to do with Yumichika?" Ikkaku screeched, annoyed that his time had been wasted. Renji stared at him with raised eyebrows. "Wait... What the fuck, Yumichika's getting married? Maybe?"

Renji did one big nod. "Aw fuck, I hate crashing parties. Which way do I go? Ya' gonna' come with me?"

Renji exhaled, rubbing at his mouth, before nodding, which Ikkaku took to mean that he'd come for a little while in case he changed his mind. "Alright, let's go then." Renji stood up, taking his wakizashi off his belt, causing Ikkaku to back off in surprise. The redhead didn't brandish the blade at him however, he just carved something clumsily on a tree trunk, pointing at it. It looked like a set of pointy mountains or maybe a badly drawn crown.

"Is that a crown?" Renji nodded. "A king?... No, a queen?" Renji nodded again, pale in the face, looking as though he was trying to warn Ikkaku. Ikkaku didn't ask him to explain further, in a rush to find Yumichika again. Hopefully Yumichika wasn't marrying royalty. It would just give the brat another thing to hold over his head.

Ikkaku had Renji walk in front of him to make sure he wasn't gonna' bury that knife in his shoulder. This however, made things slow, as Renji seemed to become less sure of himself the further away they got from the Bewilderness. "It's okay, man, don't worry so much." Renji nodded, panting from anxiety rather than physical exhaustion.

Up ahead, the forest stopped all together. Ikkaku could see, because light was pouring through the trees in the distance. They made it to the edge, and immediately Ikkaku could see that there was a field of tree stumps and scorched weeds that stretched for miles, opening the junk and memory-debris to the air. In the far distance, Ikkaku could see a huge missile sticking out of the ground, and even farther away was a huge cathedral.

As they walked towards it, Ikkaku realized that the place was far bigger than he'd anticipated. It was like Las Noches - so vast that you thought you were closer to it than you actually were.

They walked for about an hour, with Renji growing more and more frightened as they neared. The sky started to turn to that of dusk, and Renji timidly grabbed Ikkaku's hand, which Ikkaku allowed because he didn't want to go in the church alone anymore than Renji did.

"Do you believe in God, Renji?" Renji looked at him for a second, still eyeing the huge building with trepidation.

He slowly mouthed, _'I'm not really sure. Do you?'_ It took Ikkaku a couple tries to lip-read, since Renji had never done that before.

"Yeah, I guess... but not like how other people do." Renji looked at him until he explained. "I believe he exists, I just don't believe in asking him to solve your problems, er' blamin' him for the shit ya' get yerself' inta'. People pray when their kid's being hung off a bridge by its ankles. They don't when everything's fine." Renji nodded with a look that said 'I see'.

"I don't really wanna' go in there," he mumbled. "I think Yumichika was born in the Rukongai, but I wasn't. I died in a church. Haven't been in one since." Renji patted his shoulder in sympathy.

"Was an orphan... Gettin' baptized... We somehow got tangled up in some dark satanic shit. An'... no one realized that it was lighter fluid and not holy water until it was too late. Someone 'accidentally' knocked over a candle and we were all on fire in a split second. I remember my hands and my face getting burned so bad that I felt it for years after I'd died. My scalp too. See... I'm not really bald, but I don't like explainin' it ta' people... It's just painful ta' think about," Ikkaku sighed. It felt nice to get that off his chest.

Renji nodded, and Ikkaku somehow felt content with the silence as they timidly walked up to the huge double doors of the elaborate palace-like cathedral.

"Wonder who he's gettin' hitched to." Renji gave him a look that said 'no bullshit', and Ikkaku conceded that _okay,_ he knew it was Hisagi. Ikkaku put a hand on the door, not pushing it open just yet.

Renji looked ready to flee, holding his wakizashi like a common dagger as he pressed his ear to the door. After a few silent seconds, Renji backed away and let Ikkaku crack it open and peek inside. It did indeed appear that a wedding was taking place, although Ikkaku had never seen one. It at least looked like what he'd imagine it to.

There were white flowers everywhere, dreary organ music, a long red carpet, and an altar with cushions for the bride and groom to kneel on. He didn't see Yumichika, but that could just be because Yumichika was so tiny, and he was so far away. He grabbed Renji's hand and slipped in through the crack he'd popped in the heavy doors. They were still in the back section of the church, which was set off by another set of double doors, and another door on either side of those. Beyond that room, was the last few rows of pews.

Renji was shaking all over at this point, breathing through his mouth, face gray as if he were going to throw up. Honestly, he was trembling so violently that it was freaking Ikkaku out a little. "It's okay, man," Ikkaku whispered as Renji clung to his arm. Ikkaku was starting to contemplate holding him, because it really looked like Renji was about to cry, he was so scared.

Suddenly there was a high-pitched scream that scared them both nearly out of their wits. It was so loud in the cavernous building that it had everyone clutching their ears. "What have I decreed?! All marriages must be accompanied with candy! The penalty is death by beheading!" Ikkaku then heard some frantic pleas for mercy and some heavy blows, with bones cracking under the force. He could hear Yumichika's voice begging for them to 'leave Shuuhei alone'.

"Wait is that... Yachiru?" Ikkaku asked. Renji nodded, lower lip quivering. He was trying to pull Ikkaku back out through the doors so they could leave.

Ikkaku left Renji there to his own fear, walking up the aisle to the little girl who was banging her fists on her pulpit-throne, until someone gave her some candy to quiet her down.

Yachiru had a little crown on her head, which Ikkaku didn't understand. It wasn't like he held a grudge against Yachiru and her position of lieutenant that he could never advance to. So why was she superior to him here?

Suddenly, Ikkaku caught sight of Yumichika, who was hiding next to a cowering Hisagi, who was shielding him. Shuuhei looked like he had been beaten nearly senseless by the tiny queen, but was still hovering protectively over his little fiance as blood ran from his mouth.

Yumichika had on all white clothes and had a little white clover flower in his hair, while Hisagi had on formal black clothes. The beautiful little Yumichika made a shushing motion and crept towards Ikkaku, trying to stay out of sight of the tyrant crashing their wedding. Yumichika made it to his palm, kissing his finger in relief as Ikkaku brought him close to his chest in safety.

"Pachinko-dama, Gimme' Yun-Yun!" Ikkaku had by then approached the pulpit, and not a minute after he had picked up Yumichika, Yachiru crawled onto the desk and grabbed him out of his hand.

Yumichika screamed in terror, bursting into panicked tears. He kicked fruitlessly, trying desperately to escape her grasp, begging for Ikkaku to save him. Hisagi moaned, trying to pull himself up to help his love, hardly able to draw breath through his pain. "No... Please-" He began coughing, blood spattering the carpet. "Please, your highness, punish me instead."

Ikkaku could only watch in horror as Yachiru explained loudly, so as to be heard over Yumichika's frantic sobbing, that she didn't have a red crayon to write down Hisagi's sentence for his horrible crime of having no candy.

"No, no, Ikkaku help me, please help me," Yumichika blubbered, still looking so beautiful even in his terror, that Ikkaku felt Hisagi was the luckiest man in the world. The poor little thing was still screaming in fear, frantically trying to get free in a way that burnt the image into Ikkaku's eyes. He watched in growing horror as Yachiru brought Yumichika to the paper. "No, _no, Please Ikkaku, NO!_" he screamed, eyes wide.

Ikkaku realized what she was going to do just before it happened. "Wait!" Ikkaku lunged forward, trying to snatch Yumichika back, but not before Yachiru slammed Yumichika's little head down on the paper and dragged him roughly all over it, leaving behind blood and chunks of meat, causing a sickening crack of Yumichika's neck and half his spine.

Ikkaku's stomach roiled, mouth open in disgust, unable to look away as Yumichika's little body was slowly ground away into a mess of gore. He clutched at his face, horrified as he saw Yumichika's white clothes turn pink and then red. Hisagi began to weep, saying Yumichika's name over and over in apology.

Yumichika's dying scream was still ringing in the cavernous cathedral, so loud that it had traveled up the bell-tower to vibrate the bells. He could still hear him screaming and begging and crying, pleading for him to save him.

He'd just let Yumichika die. For now, it didn't matter whether this was a dream or reality, or whether Yumichika would ever appear again. It didn't matter that it might have been all a ruse. He'd just let Yumichika _die in front of him._

Ikkaku's heart broke.

His sadness quickly turning to something that he could deal with better: anger. "You're not even drawing anything!" he screamed in rage, about to start crying over his best friend's violent demise. Those tears and Yumichika's frantic screams had really fucked up his heart.

He tried to punch her even though she was a little girl; despite the fact that she was spoilt and bratty and in the wrong, she was still just a child, but he felt no guilt. He swung on her with all his might, ready to break the jaw of a little girl he had rocked to sleep and read stories to and played with. He was just so damn angry that she'd killed Yumichika for no reason that none of that mattered. He_ hated_ her right now, so much that he felt he was turning to lava. "You just_ wasted _him!"

She dodged his blow, moving too quick for him to catch her; Ikkaku had practically crawled up the overly tall pulpit, trying to grab her so he could beat her till she was blue in the face. "Oh, you want a turn? Draw me a heart!" she laughed, zipping out of his range. Ikkaku just shouted until he was out of breath, trying to catch her in a frustrating game of what she thought was 'tag'. He was so pissed off that he forgot he had his sword with him.

Suddenly she stopped in the middle of the aisle, causing Ikkaku to nearly trip over her. She had a solemn look on her face and she pointed at Renji, who was backed up in the dark entrance, twitching and shuddering violently. There was a sharp crack similar to the earlier one of Akon, and a low menacing growl reached his ears.

Ikkaku didn't need to hear Yachiru say that Renji was about to get 'scary' twice, and he picked up Yumichika's mangled remains, leaving Hisagi's corpse or near-corpse to rest in its own blood. He kicked out a stain glass window with his heel and fled through the razed field of the Bewilderness until he could flee no more.

He laid down what was left of Yumichika's poor little body, trying not to look at it as he covered it with pebbles. He had looked so beautiful, even as Hisagi's tiny bride, so far out of his reach. He'd been so beautiful even if he was about to be married to someone else, signing away his love so that it could never be Ikkaku's. He was so beautiful, and Ikkaku loved him so, shedding a few more tears over his little grave, crying pitifully for the loss of his best friend in the world.

As he got up and tried to go on, his feet dragged and his heart ached, those screams still ringing in his ears and that look of terror haunting his thoughts. He had been so happy to see him; Yumichika had looked at him like he was his salvation. He'd been so relieved that Ikkaku had come to save him, and then Ikkaku had failed him.

No one had ever killed Yumichika here besides him - what was going to happen now? Yumichika was dead, and Ikkaku was lost here, and his real body was probably going to die now too. He collapsed in the middle of the dirt road, sniffling, wiping his eyes.

It was getting darker and darker and the rows of stumps eventually disappeared and gave way to a grassy field that had apple trees growing for miles in all directions. It almost looked like the place that he and Yumichika had met so long ago, except those had been sakura trees that had grown naturally, while this was obviously an orchard. The trees were grown in neat lines here, evenly spaced apart.

He looked up at the moon, face still shining with tears that had almost dried. He whispered a couple apologies that he hadn't acted quicker, just in case Yumichika's spirit was lingering near him.

"Psst."

"What?" he asked the moon miserably, not in the mood to talk to anyone.

"Want some moonshine?" asked Ichimaru curiously, tutting in sympathy for his sadness.

"No thanks," Ikkaku said pitifully, declining, sniffling a little.

"Fine." Gin seemed disappointed, but then asked him if he'd seen Rangiku around. Ikkaku replied that he hadn't, but he'd keep an eye open. Gin smiled at him, fading into the silver moon once again.

Ikkaku wandered through the sweet-smelling orchard, reminiscing about how he and Yumichika had met so long ago in that cherry-tree grove, the one beautiful place anywhere near Rukon.

After a stranger convinced him to lay down and take a nap, he climbed up into the top branches of one of the trees, resting on it as the day turned completely to night. The moon rose higher and higher and didn't try to talk to him again.

Ikkaku shed a few more hopeless tears, still replaying Yumichika's screams in his head. If only he had been quicker and had saved the poor little guy. He wouldn't have even cared if Yumichika still decided to get married to Hisagi. Just as long as he'd still been alive...

If he ever awoke from this nightmare, he would spank Yachiru next time she messed with Yumichika's feathers. Little brat.

Of course he knew that was completely childish, as Yachiru had no control over what her dream persona did, but he still thought maybe it would make him feel better.

He closed his eyes, hoping the next time he awoke that he would be back in his body, in his and Yumichika's bedroom. Just as he began dozing off, suddenly he heard Yumichika's voice from far above him, as though Yumichika were speaking through the dark star-speckled sky beyond the clouds.

"Ikkaku, it's time to get up..." There was a pause. "Ikkaku." Ikkaku sat on the branch in shock, climbing higher, sticking his head up over the leaves to try to see where it was coming from. "Ikkaku, get up... Wake up." There was another pause, and Ikkaku's face crumpled in dismay. He hadn't thought he'd be able to hear people talking to his body, but perhaps his consciousness had split. He'd been right about night and day being opposite.

"C'mon." There was a strained sound to Yumichika's voice, as if he was trying to pick him up. "You'll be late for work. Are you going to take another sick day? Iiiiikaaaakuuuu," he whispered, voice growing louder as if he were talking directly in his ear.

"C'mon, at least make a noise. This isn't funny... Are you okay?" Ikkaku listened in misery as Yumichika started to get panicked, shaking his body and trying everything to get him to respond. Eventually he left the house and was quickly joined by the Captain.

Ikkaku fell asleep with the sounds of Yumichika's desperate pleas for him to open his eyes ringing in his ears. _'I'd do it if I could... I wish you were here with me.'_

He didn't feel the little body curl up in his hand, sighing in contentment as the fingers wrapped around him in a warm embrace.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6: How to substitute sugar with spice

* * *

If Ikkaku had thought that it was impossible to have dreams while already dreaming, then he was dead wrong. All he knew was that he'd had his eyes closed for such a long time, and if he didn't know any better, he would say that he felt his physical body.

There were crisp sheets that were burning against him and itching where his heavy body hadn't moved for such a long time. He was aching to turn onto his side, to scratch at the insides of his elbows where there was surely tape and needles, but he found that he couldn't move his real hands.

He thought he could hear congested breathing that was probably his own, but there was another soft little airy sigh that was coming from someone else. He could distantly hear the rolling of wheels and processing machines. It smelled like antiseptic. It was almost as if he was back in Seireitei and just had his eyes closed, but it felt like they were taped shut. All he could do was float and swim in water that encased his dream-body from all sides.

Here he was drifting along in the warm ocean, never feeling an urge to breathe or find the surface. All he wanted to do now was keep his eyes closed. He didn't want any salt water to get in. Swimming here was all that mattered, so he let go and let the physical sensations of the hospital fade away. He was calm, perfectly at ease here in the water, completely unaware that he was still sleeping awkwardly in a craggy apple tree.

After what seemed like hours of drifting along, the tide began to drag him away, taking him somewhere. Just as he was washed up onto the shore, he found that he was suddenly in a meadow. He found that this place was more like dreams he'd had in the past before all of this craziness happened. The surroundings changed based on his thoughts, disjointed memories leading up to one another.

He leaned down and picked a little white clover flower like the one Yumichika had worn in his hair on his wedding day, and suddenly he found a pond with lilypads and the real Yumichika's favorite flower: a lotus.

It was right there in the middle of the pond, the only lilypad that had a flower. Yumichika _loved_ lotus blooms, and a water lily was the next best thing because they looked so similar. Ikkaku immediately made to take his shirt off and roll up his pant legs so he could wade in and grab it, but he found that his shirt had suddenly disappeared anyway. He didn't know about his pants still being there, because whenever he looked down, it seemed like he didn't really have legs at all.

He got distracted by a big frog that was staring at him with its creepy chartreuse eyes. Shoot. Yumichika would be disappointed that he hadn't been able to get that… that whatever it was, he couldn't remember. Yumichika… He liked Yumichika. Ikkaku smiled a little bit, eyes unfocused and hazy as he stared at the frog.

"Maybe he'll like you," he said thoughtfully, picking the frog up easily, which was a surprise. It was really big and he'd expected it to try to get away, but here it was in his hands, big legs hanging down. He pet its head in confusion, trying to see if it would try to hop away. "Maybe it's broken," he wondered aloud, turning it this way and that. "It _looks_ okay."

He got the idea in his head to dunk the frog in pond water to clean it off so that when Yumichika took it, it would be nice and non-muddy. Once he got it in the water, however, it kicked hard and swam right out of his hands.

"Aw man," he mumbled, sitting down in the grass, finding that it was suddenly linoleum tile. When he looked up, he saw that he was in a dark room with Yumichika sitting next to him.

"Hello," Yumichika said simply, sipping from a glass of lemonade. Ikkaku was surprised to note that he was normal-sized this time. Soon they got to talking about reality, about how when he awoke, he would not be miraculously transported back into his living body. Now that the surroundings weren't warping so quickly, Ikkaku's conscious brain started to kick into gear.

"What's causing these dreams anyway?" Yumichika asked, which ticked Ikkaku off, because he didn't like the answer.

"Nothing," Ikkaku grumbled, unable to make eye contact any longer. He was still a little disappointed about that frog getting away. Besides that, it sucked to think about the fact that his crush was probably causing all of this crap.

"You know, it really is pointless to keep secrets here," Yumichika noted. Ikkaku just glared at him, even though he knew that he was right. It wasn't the real Yumichika, and it wasn't little-dream Yumichika either. The person in front of him was part of his own mind. What harm was there to vent for a while?

Oh but he couldn't, because there _was_ harm. It harmed his pride, and he'd never taken that well.

"Yeah, but what would you know about that?" Ikkaku challenged bitterly. Yumichika simply raised his eyebrows, as if to say he was _not_ having Ikkaku's attitude. As always, Ikkaku's mind could conjure up a perfect Yumichika clone. His sass, his appearance, it was all the same.

"I must be a better liar than I thought," Yumichika said lightly. Ikkaku hummed in agreement, sitting there in silence for a minute before doing a mental double-take.

"Wait, what? You really have a secret that you're not telling me?" Ikkaku said in offense and curiosity. The idea that this wasn't the real Yumichika was thrown out the window in an instant.

"What the heck, man?! I told you about my bankai right away, and you…. Ugh, c'mon dude!" Ikkaku threw his hands up, getting heated, upset when Yumichika didn't rise to argue back at him. He stayed calm and aloof like the real Yumichika and it ticked Ikkaku off. Somewhere off in the distance he could hear sad music playing and immediately he wished for his sword. Like magic, it was suddenly in his hand.

"Stand the _fuck up_," Ikkaku growled, fully intent on slicing him to pieces. Yumichika still just looked back at him, cool as a cucumber. That was the bad thing about having known Yumichika for so many years. It was impossible to intimidate him.

"You and your temper." Yumichika blew him off, waving a dismissive hand. Ikkaku started sputtering angrily. "This secret is different than your bankai… much deeper." Ikkaku had to pause for a moment.

If this was his own mind… why would this Yumichika tell him that he had a secret? As far as he knew, the real Yumichika didn't keep any secrets from him… Was this some sort of sign?

The hairs rose on the back of his neck. He dropped his arm down, opting for listening rather than fighting. A secret… The real Yumichika had a secret… Just the idea of it was already starting to gnaw at him, mixing hard with offense and curiosity. "Well what is it, then?"

"I can't tell you," Yumichika said, cut off when Ikkaku scoffed and rolled his eyes. He felt like a kid who was having candy dangled in front of his face. He could hardly take how irritating this was. It was digging under his skin so hard. He and Yumichika didn't _keep_ secrets from each other, right? Ugh, he had to _know!_

"Dude-"

"I really can't," Yumichika said defensively. "I don't know what the secret actually_ is_. I'm just telling you that there is one… Yumichika's keeping it. Not me," Yumichika said with a sniff, taking a gulp of his drink, which was now a martini.

"You're lying… There's no way you could know that," Ikkaku said, although he didn't sound very confident even in his own ears. Yumichika just gave him a look, and Ikkaku huffed. He plopped down with a thoughtful noise, one hand supporting his chin, the other braced on his crossed knee. Yumichika's soul was coming into his dream of a dream and telling him things he wasn't supposed to know? Well, stranger things had happened in the last year.

"Huh… I wonder what it is…" Ikkaku practically squirmed just thinking about it. He was seriously itching all over. He wanted to know so bad. "Why are you telling me this, anyway?"

"You're falling apart and you need a dose of confidence," Yumichika noted.

"Hm… Yeah, but why are _you_ telling me this? I mean… _I_ didn't know Yumichika had a secret… so how did you get here? Why would you tell me this?"

"Because some tiny part of Yumichika wants to know what would happen if he told you."

"Why would you want me to know that?"

"Because I care about you, of course," Yumichika said fluidly, expression softening in a way that rarely happened on the real Yumichika's face. He was starting to wonder whether this really was part of Yumichika's soul, or whether this was all some convoluted dream. Maybe dreams one had inside of dreams were meant to fuck with you even more than normal. He wouldn't be surprised.

Ikkaku sighed, heart aching so much that it was traveling up his throat and into his mouth. He couldn't help when it just came out, "That's a nice lie to tell me."

"What do you mean?" Yumichika asked with a small frown, slightly hurt. Ikkaku had to wonder why Yumichika would have to ask what he meant if he was a figment of his imagination. Instead of trying to figure it out, he just decided to roll with it.

Ikkaku sighed, rubbing the back of his head, not making eye contact. Yumichika had been right earlier when he said that it was pointless to keep secrets. So, digging deep like the man he was, Ikkaku forced it out, "You… you don't care about me the way I need you too. I don't even know if you're capable of that… I've seen you with all kindsa' men over the years, and you're so cold… Even when your heart's breakin', you don't let anyone in… I'm already the closest person to you, and asking for more would be stupid."

Once he'd started letting it out, he found that he couldn't stop, words just pouring out like a tidal wave.

"And besides, the only reason you didn't kill me in my sleep after we met was because I was the one guy who wasn't makin' passes at you. I thought I was broken or somethin', cause' everybody around me was some horrible sick pervert and I just didn't feel anything but the urge to fight… and you didn't care, you liked me anyways. You… If I told you now that I… If I told you, you'd just… It'd be breaking your trust, wouldn't it?" Ikkaku was now arguing with himself, Yumichika staying silent. Yumichika had always been a good listener like that, and he could really feel the support even through the silence.

"I mean, we've been best friends for so long that 'best friends' doesn't even cover what we are to each other… and if I told you, that would mean that the moment we became friends was a lie. I just can't… I can't," Ikkaku cut himself off, finding that his chest was really hurting. "I already tried, and… and it fucked things up between us. I'm still struggling just to get you ta' _talk_ ta' me like we used to… What do I have on Hisagi anyways… No… It's better to just leave it be, an' let you live life. All I would ever do is fuck things up… Our friendship wouldn't survive… Nothing would, it's…"

Ikkaku gave a rough sigh. "The truth is, it fucking scares me, okay? In all _kindsa' _ways. If I ever admitted that I feel that way out loud, I'd be worrying about losing ya' all the fucking time, I'd be picking fights with everyone who talks to you, and… Ugh, I don't have time for that, right? Even worse, I'm scared that you might _accept it_, cause' what the hell will happen then? I don't know anything about making someone happy like that!" Ikkaku cut himself off, glaring at his feet.

"I just know you could never feel that way back. You've finally seen that I'm an asshole that's not worth following, and maybe you're right." His anger faded away, leaving him feeling completely pitiful. "Maybe you're right," he mumbled. He'd never appreciated the fact that he never had to look over his shoulder to check if Yumichika was still there. He'd never appreciated Yumichika's presence until he'd finally looked back and seen that he was alone.

"Maybe so, but I am no liar," Yumichika said kindly, scootching closer, putting a hand on his shoulder. Ikkaku blew up, having that tough-guy syndrome in which he couldn't stand anyone touching him while he was emasculated or talking about his feelings. He tried to punch Yumichika in the face, but he ducked smoothly, prepared for it.

"Are too! You just said you have a secret!" Ikkaku shouted. "Ow!" he said suddenly, looking down at his hand. There was a crescent-shaped mark there. He looked up incredulously, truly surprised. "You fucking bit me!"

Yumichika just grinned and slapped him in the face, and when he was knocked backwards, he opened his eyes to see a bunch of green and yellow shapes above him, feeling some tingling on his cheek.

Upon further inspection, he realized that the shapes were leaves and the tingling on his cheek was due to a tiny person standing on his face, reaching for an apple on their tip-toes. The memories of his double-dream were starting to fade a little, but some part of him felt good, like he'd lifted some weight off his chest.

His eyes opened wide and he quickly focused on what was on his face, heart freezing. In that moment, he did the only thing he could think to do, which was to scream.

Yumichika immediately clutched his ears and bent over in pain, nearly being flung off somewhere in the tall grass below because of how quickly Ikkaku scrambled back to awareness.

"You- and- you were- What the fuck, man?!" Ikkaku sputtered, clutching Yumichika in his hand, checking him all over for wounds or fingermarks. Yumichika tried to explain but Ikkaku kept babbling and squeezed him tight to his chest.

"Ack-"

"-so glad you're okay, _you fucking bastard!_" Ikkaku shouted, punching the trunk of the tree, causing a few apples to fall down.

Yumichika took a gasp and walked a little crookedly when Ikkaku suddenly let go, holding his palms flat and close to his face. "Woah, you don't look so good."

Yumichika just coughed a couple times, putting a hand to his ribs, glaring at Ikkaku a little. "No thanks to you."

"I seriously thought you were dead," Ikkaku said seriously, pulling his hands closer and forcibly rubbing Yumichika up against his cheek. Yumichika tried to push him back, making mock-disgusted noises as Ikkaku practically petted him for a few minutes, holding him to his face.

"Hey, ya' want an apple?" Ikkaku asked as he hopped down from the tree, picking one up. Yumichika clung to the skinny branch Ikkaku had set him on.

"Yes, I was trying to pick one when you blasted out my eardrums," Yumichika said wryly, wiggling a finger around in his little ear. Ikkaku scratched the back of his neck sheepishly, holding his hand out and helping Yumichika get down into the tall grass.

He picked him back up almost immediately after Yumichika saw a garter snake. Ikkaku sucked on his bloody knuckles and held the apple gingerly, letting Yumichika get a little bite of it.

"Are you ready to go?"

"Go where?" Ikkaku asked in bewilderment, still just preoccupied with the fact that Yumichika wasn't dead after all.

"Down the path," Yumichika said as if it were obvious, with a nod of his head towards something. Ikkaku turned to try to see it, but didn't notice anything out of place. They were still in the same apple orchard that was identical to the one he'd been in last night. Maybe he really had come into some other world, which would explain why he'd woken up here and had been able to dream whilst already sleeping.

"What path? I don't see a path," Ikkaku said in confusion, holding a hand up to his eyes to block the sun. All he saw was field grass and straight rows of apple trees in all directions. He couldn't actually remember which way he'd come here from either.

"Yes, you do," Yumichika corrected stubbornly.

"What, no I-"

"Yes, you do." Yumichika looked at him pointedly, crossing his arms. "Say it."

"I… I see a path?" Ikkaku said, feeling really stupid. What do you know, he turned around, and suddenly the tall grass seemed to part a little bit, showing a straight line going off into the distance. "Oh. Yes, I do." The path got bigger.

"That's what I said," Yumichika said with a yawn, letting Ikkaku put him on his shoulder. Suddenly Ikkaku remembered those few times that Yumichika had shown him how to cheat the dreamscape. It appeared that it was working again, which he was glad for, because being stuck in a perpendicular world was kind of scary. It was nice to be reminded that he was just asleep.

"Alright, alright." Ikkaku started following the path, tramping through the tall grass, sending up bugs in every direction as he went. "Are you gonna' disappear on me again?" he asked warily.

"Yes. About a dozen more times," Yumichika said casually. Ikkaku facepalmed. When he came back to his senses, he saw that the divet in the grass was turning. That curve had definitely not been there a minute ago.

"I think it wants me to go this way," Ikkaku said, kind of creeped out, but he followed the turn, cutting horizontally through the apple tree rows.

"Yes, let's go. We're on schedule to meet a few more friends soon."

"Oh yeah? I'll try not to lose you this time."

"We need to try to make it as far as Portside today, but right now… I _think_ the next landmark is the 'Sugar Bowl'."

"Oh. Okay. Will it be hard to see?" Ikkaku asked, imagining an actual sugar bowl.

Yumichika shook his head. "It shouldn't be."

Ikkaku's legs started itching like crazy as he waded through grass that became taller by the minute. Soon the trees were gone all together and the grass was stretching on nearly endlessly, some hospitable looking forest on the other end of the enormous field.

After walking and chatting for nearly twenty minutes, they'd made it almost halfway through the field. All of a sudden, Ikkaku plowed over something and ended up smacking down in the dirt _hard._ Well, it _would've_ been hard, were it not for all the weeds and grass.

Yumichika screamed as he fell off Ikkaku's shoulder, skidding away into the grass. Ikkaku spat out a couple of seeds, getting up.

"What the fuck did I-" Ikkaku stopped short, looking down and finding Renji laying in the grass, just waking up. "What the heck, man, why are you sleeping out here in the middle of nowhere?!"

Renji gave him a look. Yumichika peeped from somewhere off in the distance that Ikkaku was the one who decided to walk into the one obstacle in the entire field.

"I didn't ask for any input from the sass department!" Ikkaku called back, rolling his eyes, holding a hand out for the sleepy Renji to take. "You feeling better, dude?" He helped him get up, and Renji swayed on his feet a little, legs wobbly.

Renji nodded hesitantly, holding his own arms cautiously, as if he were afraid he would hurt Ikkaku otherwise. Ikkaku cringed when he saw huge gouge marks all over Renji's body. Had he scratched himself when he'd gone nuts earlier?

Renji made a sorry expression, seeming guilty about what had happened yesterday, but Ikkaku just waved him off, picking up little Yumichika who had made it back through the grass and tapped on his leg.

"Wanna' come with us?" Renji brightened considerably and nodded, pointing off into the distance towards the woods, which was actually a different direction from the path.

"Shouldn't we stay on the path?" Ikkaku asked curiously, looking to Yumichika, who shook his head. He shrugged, letting Renji lead them through the grass. Soon enough they found what looked like a _real_ path. That is to say, there was a trail of mowed grass that led straight up to the woods. Ikkaku was relieved, happy to finally be able to see the ground again. Walking was much quicker when he wasn't practically wading through grass.

Entering the woods, he found that this was completely different than the Bewilderness. Rather than seeing chunks of memory debris, this place looked more like a jungle, a beautiful one at that. There were vines and fancy flowers, and he could hear the hum of a million insects if he stood still.

Ikkaku decided to lead them, after prompting from Yumichika of course. "You're supposed to know the way. I don't know why you keep asking me for directions," Yumichika commented. Ikkaku then took it upon himself to prove Yumichika and his sarcastic smug ass wrong, following the sound of running water.

They made it to a little river with alarmingly blue water, and by then Renji looked all healed up, scratch marks gone. Ikkaku hoped that he wouldn't go crazy on them again, but just in case, he decided he'd just shove Renji in the water rather than fight him. The current would carry Renji away a little, giving Ikkaku time to escape.

Renji tugged on his sleeve and Ikkaku startled guiltily. Renji shook his head and put a hand up to his ear. Ikkaku listened as well, suddenly able to hear something weird. He couldn't quite identify it, but it _sort_ of sounded like voices.

Yumichika knowingly said that they were going in the right direction. Ikkaku cautiously approached the noise, Renji following behind almost silently. Yumichika then took it upon himself to warn him, hearing some shrill laughter. "Oh god, she's still practicing her routine."

"Who is?"

"Rangiku," Yumichika said with a little eyeroll. "She's into paranormal paronomasia these days. She's been pretending to be a vampire lately too, and I'm still not sure if it's an elaborate joke or not." Ikkaku hummed, somewhat remembering Rangiku being a semi-famous comedian here when she wasn't looking for Ichimaru. What was her stage name again? Lolly-pop? No, that wasn't it…

Eventually they came upon a little clearing next to a small waterfall. What he could see was mildly disturbing.

Underneath a peach tree, was Rangiku and Kira. Rangiku was singing cheerily and dancing in a circle, while Kira was moaning and weeping hysterically, dragging his feet. They were circling around a burning persimmon bush.

"I say I'll go through fire, and I'll go through fire as he wants it, so it shall be," Rangiku sang.

Ikkaku watched with wide eyes. "Why is he crying like that?" he whispered, pointing to Kira, finally understanding what Yumichika had meant by 'mess'. Renji watched, seeming traumatized, not blinking as he stared at the two of them. Yumichika leaned in close to Ikkaku's ear, telling him that Kira was trying to put out the fire with his tears.

"Crazy he calls me, sure I'm crazyyyy, crazy in looove, you seeeee." Kira was crying along with Rangiku now, blubbering so hard that he could hardly breathe or talk right. Rangiku didn't seem concerned with his sorrows. Suddenly Ikkaku remembered the 'sadlands' from earlier… Maybe Kira had come from there.

What disturbed him more than the burning bush, was that they were right next to that little waterfall. It wouldn't be too difficult for them to cart some water in their hands and put out the fire, but instead they were choosing to dance around it in some little seance.

"Why… why are they doing that?"

"-shakes the bough, he moves me with a smile," Rangiku smiled creepily, turning and meeting Ikkaku's eyes dead-on, startling him. "The difficult, I'll do right now, the impossible-" She turned and kept on dancing, not paying attention to them.

The jungle seemed to become darker, fitting the theme of what was sure to turn into a nightmare. Ikkaku's heart began to pound as the flickering of the fire sent shadows over everything.

"When people are happy, Ikkaku… they can hear the music," Yumichika said solemnly, "but when they are sad, they understand the words."

"I say I'll care forever, and I mean forever… if I have to hold up the sky-"

Renji moved into the clearing, looking at the bush intently, and then to Kira, who had tears profusely dripping from his eyes, more than was normal.

"Sure, I'm crazy, crazy in love am I-" Rangiku gave a short bow. "Thank you!"

Renji clapped a little bit, smiling. Kira's voice rose into a wail as the bush kept burning. It was then that Ikkaku noticed that it was on fire, but was not actually burning or turning to ash.

Deciding that it was pointless to try talking to Kira, Ikkaku approached Rangiku, who he now noticed was in a denim mini-dress that looked like overalls. She had a barmaid top on underneath, which was striped red and white like a 'candystriper'. Her skin was pale and greyish, almost like she was a corpse or something.

"Hey. Which way is the sugar bowl?"

"Oh, there's no way out there," Rangiku said, straight-faced. Yumichika gave a small moan, putting his face in his hands. Ikkaku furrowed his brow, glancing at him for a second. "You could say it's a _dead end_,"she ribbed, elbowing him. Kira burst into renewed tears.

"Enough, Rangiku. We're running late, we don't have time for this," Yumichika said, pointing in her face. She crouched a little, coming close to Ikkaku's shoulder.

"You don't? Here," she said helpfully, pulling a pocketwatch out from between her breasts, handing it to Ikkaku. Yumichika let out a slow breath. Kira was crying so loudly now that Renji was holding his ears.

"Slow down there, Izuru. Cryin's a crime," Rangiku said cheerily, hugging him around the neck as he blubbered into his hands. "Boo, hoo, hoo, poor little ghostie." Izuru clamped his hands on each side of his head and screamed, crying his eyes out, looking sort of like the ghoul from _Scream_.

"Hey, Rangiku," Ikkaku said, suddenly remembering Ichimaru from last night. "Your boyfriend was looking for you."

"Oh, I broke up with him," Rangiku said seriously, and Yumichika seemed to actually have hope that she was finally going to help them. "He wasn't my _type_." She grinned, baring her pointed teeth, which were tinged a little bit red.

"Oh, for the love of-" Yumichika groaned. Renji was smiling, still trying to make Izuru feel better by patting his back.

Ikkaku stopped Rangiku so she couldn't set them up for another one. "Stop. Your jokes are bad."

For a moment he'd been cautious, thinking that she would get upset or something, but she took it in stride. "My jokes may be bad, but at least my blood isn't," she said, looking at him with narrowed eyes as if he were drenched in the stuff.

Ikkaku paused. "Bad blood…" Yumichika pulled his eye sockets down, groaning. Renji giggled a little bit, with no voice of course.

"I don't have any, so stop asking." Rangiku crossed her arms and turned her head away, nose in the air.

"I wasn't!" Ikkaku shouted, getting annoyed.

Renji finally broke it up, after Ikkaku chased Rangiku around for a while. She was fast and kept hurling bad puns. Renji waved his hands between them, giving Rangiku a pleading look and then rubbed his fingers together like he was sprinkling something, holding his other hand underneath like a little bowl.

"Okay, c'mon sugar, let's go," Rangiku grinned merrily, dragging the weeping Kira along with them. The further away they got from the bush, Izuru started calming down, just sniffling a little.

Ikkaku sighed and followed behind, trying to act natural as he began hearing people talking to his body once again.

Yumichika seemed to be there with him, because whenever he heard some kind of door open and a doctor would talk, Yumichika would reply. Unohana still insisted that nothing was wrong with him. Sometimes his Captain was there, asserting that if he was fine then they should just slap him awake and let him sleep at home. Unohana would explain that he wasn't sleeping, but appeared to be in a coma, which meant that he would die if left unattended.

Things went quiet for a long time, and then Renji came to check on Yumichika. They talked for a while, and it seemed that Renji was trying to keep the secret about his dreams, but was starting to feel guilty and concerned enough to think about breaking his promise.

After ages of silence, Ikkaku's heart clenched as he heard Renji get up and mutter something to him under his breath. "I hope you can get yourself out of this… whatever this is."


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7: How to have a change of heart without surgery

* * *

After walking with Rangiku and Kira for nearly an hour, Ikkaku was undecided on who would win an 'annoying contest'. Izuru had started crying again once someone had accidentally mentioned Ichimaru, and Rangiku was making bad jokes nonstop, which were all about ghosts and zombies. To make things worse, she was carrying an IV bag filled with blood and was drinking it out of the connected plastic tube like it was a straw.

It paid off at least, because Rangiku really did lead them to where they were meant to go. It turned out not to be an actual sugar bowl, but a candy store that looked like an old-fashioned theatre where kabuki performances might be held. As they went in, the dusty wave-glass windows were taped up with posters advertising 'Lolly Gags', who performed in the evenings.

The place was rather creepy like the barber shop he'd come to earlier. The floors were dirty and the windows were coated with dust. The light was eerie and yellow, and little twinkling paper butterflies were hanging in the place of lamps. There was something that was keeping him from looking directly at the person behind the candy counter.

When they made it inside, Renji had once again become scared like a spooked animal and was holding tight to one of Ikkaku's hands. Izuru was now weeping silently, breathing through his fingers and trying to pull himself together quietly. Yumichika wasn't talking much and was sitting very close to his neck, practically holding on to him. Rangiku didn't seem to be scared, but she was silent too, not even slurping rudely from her blood pouch like before.

There was a palpable tension in the room as they looked around the mostly filled booths and the candy counter in the center of the store. The candy counter itself looked rather like a bar, which stretched around the store in a circle. Inside the circle was a large shelf pillar that was also round, housing candy jars all the way around. Ikkaku wondered how the employees got out after their shift was done. Did they just climb over the counter or something? There didn't seem to be a gate or a door or anything, and still, for some reason he could _not_ bring himself to look at the person behind the counter, even though he was trying.

Frustrated, he looked around to the side. There were customers staring rudely at them, and he found that most of them were tough men that you'd see at a bar. Through a few old western-style swinging doors, there was a stage and a few chairs and tables that were knocked over. Glass bottles were on the floor and candy wrappers literally made up the wallpaper.

Ikkaku figured out why his friends were acting strange when he saw a large sign that was almost as big as the candy menu. It was a long list of Queen Yachiru's decrees, and when he read some, it almost made sense that they would be displayed in a candy store.

_'All funerals must been accompanied with candy.'_

_'A fee equal to a work-hours salary must be paid in candy without fail.'_

_'Whosoever asks for directions or assistance shall pay by way of candy.'_

_'Whosoever denies or fails to provide a dying man a last piece of candy shall be put to death.'_

_'All prison sentences must be accompanied with candy.'_

_'Tax exemption may be received on the condition that the debtor pay with an equal amount of candy.'_

_'Whosoever breaks the law must repay their crime with an equal amount of candy.'_

_'No candy shall be allowed to spoil. Anyone found in possession of candy past the date of expiration shall be put to death._'

'_Wow… Harsh,'_ Ikkaku thought, swallowing. As it seemed, the tiny tyrant was not here, and it seemed like a good reminder that they should have some candy with them just in case.

Rangiku mumbled something about the Red Queen finally bringing about some justice, and Ikkaku had to stare at her in wonder about how Rangiku could be so heartless in this world. She didn't care about Kira crying, and she didn't care about that murderous tyrant. Hell, she _supported_ her. This was messed up, so he stopped thinking about it, instead opting to buy some candy.

Ikkaku didn't have any money of course, and was dismayed, realizing that he had lost the stuff he had been carrying with him some time ago. It wasn't like he'd found any money, but Hozukimaru was gone again, along with the other things he'd collected before he'd met Akon, so he really had nothing to trade with either.

Luckily, Rangiku had some money, which was strangely iridescent and shiny, not quite silver, not quite pearl. Ikkaku thanked her and used to it to get some weird candies he'd never heard of. They were twisted crystallized bows that looked like they were made of some kind of maple sugar that might melt in one's mouth, but Ikkaku didn't dare eat any. They looked like they would crush easily, so just in case, he got some plain peppermints too.

At that point, Yumichika directed Ikkaku to the bathroom and said that he should go in even if he didn't need to 'go'. Of course, Ikkaku didn't even know why they'd come inside this store in the first place, since this was just supposed to be the next landmark that they were passing by, but he didn't question Yumichika this time.

Immediately, he noticed that the perspective of everything changed. The room was suddenly on four different planes instead of three and there were mirrors everywhere, screwing with his vision. Moving with precision completely stunk because he always seemed to be going the opposite direction that he was supposed to. It was almost impossible not to look in a mirror, so he kept trying to look down at his own hand instead of the reflected one, but every time he tried, he confused his real hand with one in another mirror. It took him probably five whole minutes to properly wash his hands, trying to turn the grimy sink knobs the right way.

The water didn't look very clean and as he shook his hands off, he looked up, directly into one mirror, and suddenly, he was looking at himself – no surprise – but it was something that had happened a long time ago.

In a large oblong mirror with a cheap gold frame with peeling paint, he could see it playing out. "C'mon, there's a spittin' contest in town!" He watched himself, barely seventeen, still thinking himself a man. It was back when he'd been young and dumb enough to still have some sort of code of chivalry, which caused him to want to take care of Yumichika, perhaps to prove that he was a man.

He could see himself towing Yumichika along by the wrist after they had first met in the woods so long ago. Yumichika had been older, maybe in his early twenties, and there he was trying to look disgusted, but his face looked so surprised and delighted that Ikkaku found himself unable to look away from the mirror, even as black grime started to creep forward and turn the glass black.

At the time of the memory, he'd already gotten into that habit of going on ahead without looking back, and he hadn't seen Yumichika's facial expression that was filled with so much hope and adoration, but now that he did he found that his heartstrings were being cut. He thought of when they'd first met, when he'd tried in his own stupid way to be a man and take care of Yumichika by scraping together money and protecting him, even though Yumichika made it clear that he could fight on his own.

Now that he thought about it, he wondered why Yumichika hadn't left him, a stupid kid on the cusp of adulthood who thought he knew everything and didn't want to be told otherwise. Yumichika had stuck around and tolerated his company, not complaining when Ikkaku hung around him or was overly demanding. Ikkaku had always been in charge, always having the plans, and Yumichika went along with them without question, even if he knew they were stupid or flawed.

Ikkaku watched his younger self pull Yumichika along, and suddenly he realized that he had felt strong at that time because Yumichika hadn't crushed his spirit and handed his ass to him like every other man who tried to get in on Yumichika's goods. Yumichika had believed in him and given him confidence, even when he was wrong. Yumichika was the person he was always fighting for, trying to impress in the back of his mind, even if he wasn't paying attention.

"Spitting is ugly," Yumichika said, finally getting control of his facial muscles and forcing his smile away.

Young-Ikkaku stopped, looking back, perhaps disappointed. "Oh… Well, we're still going," he insisted, already making their decisions the first day they'd met. Yumichika went along with it, and it had been that way ever since.

As blackness covered the mirror completely, Ikkaku tried to look away and found another memory above him in a mirror that looked like a silver tea tray. He was young still, perhaps twenty-three, and he was in bandages. It looked like it was after he'd fought Kenpachi, because that was the only time he'd allowed Yumichika to patch him up. That was when his worldview had been rocked; his stubborn childish principles had completely changed to align with Kenpachi's, even if some of them didn't line up as much as he'd thought.

Yumichika was rubbing his back and he was eating something or other, sitting in front of a fire. They actually had some place to sleep that night, which he'd been glad for. For the first time, he was allowing Yumichika to fix him up and get him healthy so he could be good and strong when he found Kenpachi again. Before, he'd been hesitant, thinking that it would feel weird to have someone taking care of him, but he found that he actually liked it, and besides, those bandages were necessary. He didn't want Zaraki to turn him away; he wanted to _follow_ him so bad, so Kenpachi could teach him to fight.

Ikkaku didn't know how much time he spent staring at the mirror, watching the two of them in silence for a few minutes, maybe an hour. Finally, he saw Yumichika give a little sigh and move behind him, still rubbing his back, which suddenly made a cracking noise. He could vaguely remember that he'd messed his back up so bad that he could hardly stand after that fight. Yumichika had literally had to drag him to safety after Zaraki had left them.

"Ooohhh, I dunno' what you just did, but that felt great." Sure enough, Ikkaku sat up and twisted with ease, his back having finally corrected itself. "Seriously, it doesn't even hurt anymore."

"Good," Yumichika said, a little smile on his face before blackness corroded the mirror's glass beyond recognition.

Ikkaku found another mirror, smaller than the others and with an ornate frame, and it looked like he was looking directly at Yumichika, as if he was looking through his own body's eyes.

"I really messed up tonight, didn't I? Sorry. Seriously, though, that was one hell of a fight." Yumichika almost looked concerned, but then he just smiled cruelly and turned away, just in time for the glass to go black.

Another mirror, this one with a handle. It seemed to be the bottom of a bucket.

He saw Yumichika sitting silently in the dirt, holding his cheek with a quiet sort of blood-lust in his eyes. Ikkaku could see himself, maybe nineteen, holding Yumichika's good-for-nothing boss at swordpoint, threatening him within an inch of his life if he didn't leave Yumichika alone.

"He doesn't owe you anything, you bastard."

"On the contrary." Yumichika had been a top-seller or something, and the guy didn't want to let him go, but after Ikkaku cut off a few of his fingers, he agreed.

Yumichika didn't cry, but as Ikkaku held out a hand to help him off the ground, his eyes were shining with something like freedom. Ikkaku held out a hand and touched the glass, having to watch Yumichika's face turn black and burn away like paper.

Another mirror. This one was a looking-glass with a crystal handle, but it was attached firmly to the wall like the rest. Ikkaku started to feel like he was spinning. His heart felt like it weighed a ton.

"I never hoped for those guys to be so strong. Wasn't that fun?"

Another.

"Boy, am I lucky tonight."

Another.

"These academy uniforms are so ugly," Yumichika complained, causing Ikkaku to slow down and focus on the mirror. That was right before Yumichika had had to cut his hair. He'd been so distraught, and Ikkaku remembered because he'd been the one to cut it for him.

Yumichika had complained about the uniforms for months, but Ikkaku actually liked them. Yumichika looked nice in red, and his long black hair looked sort of _right_ against the crisp white of the uniform. Ikkaku had never been able to keep his clean, but Yumichika had always had some sort of magic trick to repel dirt.

"Hmph," Ikkaku saw himself pout, remembering that he had been upset about not being able to just join Zaraki's division straight away. "Why do we even have ta' go ta' school, anyway?" Truth be told, he had felt a little threatened and emasculated, since he knew that he knew nothing about book smarts. He was a little concerned that he might never be able to graduate.

Yumichika might go on without him and join Zaraki's squad without waiting. Ikkaku remembered that after that thought popped into his head, he'd demanded that Yumichika help him learn to read. He knew a few kanji, but not enough to be able to read a book easily. Of course, Yumichika was happy to help. He always was.

"It'll only be a few years and then you'll see your precious Kenpachi again."

"Ya' think he'll take us into his division?" Ikkaku asked, hope in his voice. He looked off into the distance at the white walls separating the academy from the division barracks.

"Of course he will," Yumichika assured.

"If he doesn't, I'll make him," Ikkaku muttered. The memory burned to ashes.

Another mirror, right next to it, was broken into a few pieces, giving him five or six different views of the same memory.

"See, that didn't take so long, did it?"

"Psh… The nerve of that inspector, telling me I barely passed," Ikkaku huffed, holding his certificate that said that he'd graduated.

"You could put in a bit more effort at kidou, Ikkaku."

"What for?" Ikkaku scoffed, not noticing Yumichika's face fall. Ikkaku looked on through the mirror, wondering why Yumichika looked so sad and surprised. "I'll never be any good at that anyway. It's stupid."

"Hm. If you say so…" Yumichika's head went down and he was smiling again, having hidden something expertly by smoothly changing the subject. "I do wish that these work uniforms were a little less plain."

"Why don't you… uh… glam it up? Or something," Ikkaku said awkwardly.

"Really? What color should I use?" Yumichika asked enthusiastically.

"Uh… any color, I dunno'."

Another. Another. Another. Them together during their golden years, always traveling, always happy even though they were suffering. Them leaving the Rukongai behind forever. Them joining Zaraki's squad and kicking everyone's ass, taking seated position almost immediately. Them on missions together. Them taking care of Yachiru. They had always been a team and all they'd ever had for a long time was each other. Every memory felt like a knife, like it was something that would never happen again. They all were complete with Yumichika's beautiful eyes, the real Yumichika from his world, so pretty, so broken, so far away.

"Are you crying?" little-Yumichika asked, finally drawing Ikkaku out of his trance.

"No," he said out of reflex, almost looking into a mirror on impulse to check to make sure he wasn't. It wouldn't have helped anyway. They were all black, as if someone had painted the glass.

Sure enough, when he felt his cheeks, his hands were wet, but that was probably just because he'd just washed his hands. His nose was running, but that had to be because it was cold, and his throat was tight and burning, but that must be because he'd eaten a spicy peppermint or something. He definitely wasn't crying.

"You're _crying_," Yumichika said in dismay, maybe trying to comfort him, and it pissed Ikkaku off so bad that he wished Yumichika was full size so he could punch him.

"Shut up, no, I'm not," he said roughly, practically stabbing Yumichika with his eyes in an attempt to shut him up.

"I think you are."

"Oi," he growled, glaring at Yumichika. "I didn't ask for your opinion, okay?"

"That doesn't make me wrong." Ikkaku just growled, clenching his fists and then wiped his eyes with his wrist for good measure. "Maybe we should leave…" Yumichika sighed, maybe regretting bringing him in here.

Ikkaku wholeheartedly agreed, and leave they did. When he came back out of the bathroom, he was surprised to see his friends still there. Even though this dream had become a real world, he still expected weird things like that to happen. Maybe his dreamscape was saving up to lull him into some false sense of security and then pull a huge prank on him. Ominous...

Rangiku had bought them all 'blood' lollipops that probably weren't made of real blood. It had quieted Kira down, at least. He actually looked pretty happy. For all those tears, Izuru sure was pretty when he smiled. Ikkaku unwrapped his own sucker and stuck the flat candy in, tasting raspberry.

"Good, it's just fruit blood, then," he mumbled.

"Hey!" Kira said, taking his sucker out of his mouth and staring at it, sticking his tongue out. "This isn't fruit," he said in confusion, which was weird to Ikkaku, because it had taken Izuru like five minutes to figure out.

"Oh, that's mine then," Rangiku said, snatching it and putting it in her own mouth, giving Izuru the one she'd been saving for herself. She must have mixed them up.

Renji just stopped walking all together and stared at Izuru morbidly, eyes wide. He tugged on Ikkaku's arm, making a distressed face. Renji seemed upset that Kira had been eating the candy that was real blood. Ikkaku just shrugged, kind of creeped out too. "Doesn't look like he's scared." Renji exhaled, still watching Izuru strangely as they started to walk again.

Yumichika was a little disappointed when Ikkaku wouldn't share his candy, but Renji was eager to let him have some. Ikkaku hesitantly let Renji have Yumichika on his shoulder for a while. It didn't seem like he'd disappear yet, so he allowed it, watching Renji hold out the sucker for Yumichika to try to lick. They walked for about an hour through a grayish field that eventually became a desert. It wasn't a sandy desert. The ground was so dry that it was cracked, big flaky pieces of clay sticking up all over. Rangiku seemed disinterested in everything and simply plugged her nose, mentioning something about smelling blood. Ikkaku rolled his eyes, watching her swirl her lollipop in her mouth.

"It's just your candy."

"I don't think so..."

The light wasn't particularly harsh, in fact, it was actually kind of dark out, even though it was nowhere near night-time. When Ikkaku looked up, he saw that there were two suns, and both had some sort of dark halo around them that was casting shadow rather than light. It was hard to explain, because they could all still see fine.

They made it up a dry hill with big cracked plates of dirt that required careful climbing, and from there, they continued on upward past lumpy piles of black cloth. As they kept walking, the piles got larger and larger until it seemed that they were walking between two cliffs. That was when Ikkaku realized that the cloth was actually that of individual shinigami uniforms, tattered and stained shihakusho that were all around them. Maybe his mind had decided to group items that had been repeated or seen many times in real life.

They stayed silent, walking warily through the ravine, which slowly came back down until each pile of clothes was probably up to their foreheads, just high enough that they couldn't see over the sides. The ground crunched beneath their feet, sometimes splintering and poking their soles.

The air was tense and electrified, keeping all of Ikkaku's arm hairs standing up. Even Kira was calm, finally having gotten a handle on his nervous emotional behavior, although he was still looking around warily. Then again, they all were.

"They're yours," Yumichika said quietly, causing Renji and Izuru to jump even though he was nearly silent. Ikkaku looked at the clothing with interest.

"Woah..." He looked back the way they'd came. Surely he couldn't have gone through this many uniforms throughout his career? Then again, if they were busy, he probably went through one a day from the way they got all slashed up. Even if he only took one hundred and fifty years from his shinigami career and multiplied that by the amount of days in a year... That would be a five-figured number.

Suddenly Ikkaku looked down and saw that the sharp ground was lined with thousands upon thousands of wooden splinters and broken blades. "Hozukimaru," he whispered, stopping dead, looking up so he could see down the path. They'd been walking over these 'woodchips' for probably twenty minutes. He was getting really creeped out.

He tried to drown out the noise that was coming from above. Still, no one here in this dream world could hear it except for him. He could hear Renji talking to Yumichika, and it must've been late at night because they both sounded tired.

Renji was telling Yumichika what happened, or what he thought had happened. "He told me about these insane dreams he's been having... I think maybe he finally died in one of them... Maybe his soul's gone, or... I don't know. I don't know how to get him out of there or if he'll be like this forever, just... Try talking to him... I don't know what else to do."

Ikkaku's chest clenched up; he was grateful that Renji at least hadn't spilled that they thought the dreams were caused by him holding in his feelings. Even in a crazy situation like this, Renji still kept his promises.

"Ikkaku," Yumichika said hollowly. "Just... just wake up already."

Ikkaku blinked and smiled a little bit even though he felt like dying. He looked down at his feet, starting to walk again down the path of his broken swords, that of which had been damaged through countless battles.

Eventually they came to a place where the uniform walls seemed to end in the distance. As they approached, they suddenly realized they were atop an enormous hill, and laid out beneath them was a twisting path that led through the parched dirt down to a huge lake... no, not a lake, _an ocean._ The suns shone on the water, which looked red and unnaturally thick, but that was probably a trick of the light. There were no waves, no ripples, nothing. It almost looked like fabric.

Ikkaku's breath was taken away as they came closer, finding a boat which was just rising and falling in the water... No, no, this wasn't water. It was _blood,_ and it had suddenly started bubbling like a tar pit.

The dock was made of the large blades of his bankai, from the one time he'd broken it. Looking back, he considered it all for a moment. This was his legacy, just a bunch of empty trophies of his past battles... and all of it was broken. Every single thing, every uniform, every bit of skin, every sword, they were all destroyed.

They got in the boat, Izuru unnaturally silent, seeming almost like his real self. Rangiku was plugging her nose, presumably to keep up with her vampire joke. At least if she really was a vampire, she was making an effort not to go crazy and bite someone because she'd caught some blood-smell. Then again, if she was a vampire, the smell would be too insanely strong for her to resist.

Renji just stared out at the endless sea of blood, seeming awestruck and disturbed. Ikkaku had to wonder where it could have possibly come from. Getting in the boat, Ikkaku shoved them off of the dock, seeing that there weren't any oars, but a long pole that he could push off of the bottom with.

"Yumichika?" he asked uncertainly, not sure exactly where they should be heading. Thankfully no one freaked out or rocked the boat, which was something like a canoe or a boat one would use in the city of Venice. "Where did all this blood come from?" It couldn't be all the blood he'd bled from all of his battles. It couldn't be if he was still alive, right? He definitely hadn't bled this much, even if he was looking at his whole life.

Yumichika was quiet for a minute, sitting in Renji's lap. Then he looked up. There was nothing out here but the red sea and the black sky. The ocean was bubbling like mad, peppering them with drops of blood. Renji seemed to be hyperventilating, clinging to the sides of the boat like he was afraid it would capsize at any moment, even though they were gliding through so smoothly that there wasn't a single wave left behind.

"From every enemy you've ever slain." Yumichika stood up and pointed off around a turn and suddenly Ikkaku saw an island that looked like a monstrous boulder that was poking out of the water.

After about ten minutes of silently shoving the boat along, it occurred to Ikkaku that an ocean would be too deep this far out. Still, the pole easily touched the ground, revealing that the water was shallow. It was almost as if this was a valley that had filled up, as if the blood wasn't naturally supposed to be here.

Kira spoke up, saying the second normal sentence Ikkaku had ever heard from him. "How does it keep warm enough that the blood doesn't coagulate? Shouldn't it be like jelly?"

"No, look," Yumichika said, pointing to the bubbles. "Their blood is boiling." Rangiku started laughing like crazy for a full three minutes, dipping her fingertip into the water to take a taste.

Ikkaku was getting antsy as they approached the island and Yumichika crawled back over to him and was lifted onto his shoulder.

"It's not just your enemies' blood... There is innocent blood, blood that others have shed for your sake... All this blood is blood you wish you had given. You'd like to think that dying for another is foolish, but... your heart betrays you." He pointed directly upwards and suddenly Ikkaku heard words from the real Yumichika.

"You never would've wanted to go this way... I would take your place... to give you your warrior's death."

Ikkaku's heart jolted, not just from either Yumichika's words, but from what he could see now. The island wasn't a rock at all, but a mass grave. It was an amalgamation of tangled bodies, severed limbs, and dried corpses. These were the enemies that had bled the ocean of blood. There sure were a lot.

Suddenly, using that pole to push the boat made him feel like Charon from the Underworld.

When they came up upon the 'shore', Renji threw up over the side of the boat, not wanting to set foot upon the 'land'. Rangiku didn't seem to care either way and just got out. Ikkaku warily put his foot on the 'ground', testing whether it would give way under him or whether one of his old opponents would grab him, but nothing happened. He resolved not to look down and to just walk, not paying mind to the dead bodies. There didn't seem to be any living people left at all.

"No_body_ here," Rangiku quipped.

Yumichika rolled his eyes. "Weak," Kira called blandly from the boat, a little grey in the face, but apparently feeling snarky enough to insult her lame joke. Ikkaku looked back at them, beckoning them to follow.

Soon enough, the corpses were packed together so tightly that if Ikkaku didn't focus enough, he didn't have to notice a hand or a face of someone he didn't even recognize. If he'd beaten them, they probably weren't worth remembering, but they probably remembered him and resented him for defeating them, which would explain why the blood was boiling like hot tar.

He thought back to what Yumichika had said about giving his own life in Ikkaku's place. That was completely stupid. What, did Yumichika think he'd die for him too? Sure, he loved him, but that was just... _Dying_ for somebody else? No. Nope.

Still, the thought of watching Yumichika's eyes go dark set part of him on fire inside, and suddenly, the bodies gave way.

Little-Yumichika looked at him smugly, and Ikkaku suddenly got the idea that little-Yumi had been able to hear what his body heard all along. He suddenly got the urge to throw him back into the ocean to drown. The jerk.

"Tch'. You're so high and mighty," Yumichika teased Ikkaku further, irritating him enough that he felt like taking half of him in each hand and twisting him until he ripped apart like a party favor. The violent urges were swirling in his gut, stronger than ever, and he had struggle to beat them back.

"You're so full of double standards it's ridiculous, Ikkaku. You say that it's completely shameful for Yumichika to want to die for you, yet you battle recklessly and don't care about how he would feel were you to leave him behind. On top of that, you turn it around and refuse to accept that he could die before you instead. When the Queen killed me you were ready to kill her. What do you say to that?"

Ikkaku clammed up, repeating an inward mantra that he would not add Yumichika to the collection of bodies here.

"You want to die a warrior's death for Kenpachi, but dying for another's sake isn't even an option? Someone you admire versus someone you love? You love him, yet you have no faith in him, you don't respect him, you don't admire him at all? What kind of love is that-"

"I don't love you. I _hate_ you," Ikkaku said bitterly. He was defensive, angry, because those words hurt. They hurt because somewhere deep down, he knew they were true, and he didn't want to be told that he was a screwed up monster, even if he was.

He probably wouldn't act if Yumichika was in a fight to the death. If Yumichika died for his sake or faded away in his arms, he probably wouldn't do anything, but God would he want to avenge him. He would hunt the killer down and make them feel all the pain Yumichika never voiced, he would kill them and make them lay there in their cold blood until they had repaid every second of life that Yumichika had lost because of them. Yumichika would be dead, and he would _care, _even if it wasn't the Eleventh Division's way.

It was shameful, it grated on his male pride and everything he'd held to be true for decades, but his heart wrenched at the thought of Yumichika dying before him.

Dying for another... It was stupid and pointless as hell; Ikkaku still felt that way, but he also thought that it was okay to give your life for someone if they would do the same for you, and Yumichika had just said that he would, even if he thought that he was just talking to a comatose body.

"You'd like to think that you wouldn't die for him, but you know you would, because-"

"Because that's the fool I am," Ikkaku admitted, cutting Yumichika off.

"It's about time you learned some empathy." Fuck, it still didn't feel right inside him, thinking about doing something so cowardly and shameful as to interfere in someone's battle and save their life. It was rock-stupid and it was out of his alignment, but Yumichika was right for once. Even if it was shameful, he would do it if it came to it. He would die by the sword if only Yumichika could live on.

The island moved again, and Ikkaku felt something in his heart shift.

"What's that?" Izuru asked in a shaky voice, hiding behind Ikkaku. Renji hesitantly started forward, breathing twice as much as he should, freaking out as his feet touched dead faces and chests and arms. He was practically crying, and Izuru looked upset as well, so Ikkaku stood in front of them, letting them hide if they wanted. Rangiku was silent, maybe filing her nails or drinking the blood straight out of the sea.

Ikkaku looked forward, starting hesitantly into a little hollow that the bodies had formed. It was like an archway or a cave, the top being formed from a hundred or so interlaced arms, the walls being made of rotting or mummified chests, ribs plainly on display in some. Inside, there was a big guy that Ikkaku actually remembered fighting back in the Rukongai.

The man hadn't had a sword and had punched like he had a rock for a fist. He remembered coming back through town and seeing vultures picking apart the guy's stomach. No one had moved him after he'd died and his guts had been eaten away.

Through the hole in his torso, Ikkaku could see a door handle.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8: How to walk into a bar and not become a bad punchline

* * *

They were all quiet for a moment, stunned and horrified. There was a door through the man's carcass.

The door… The path that they were following continued on through this body-island, and the door they had to pass through was through some dead man's body.

Oh, gross.

Thrilled as he was that they were going the right way, Ikkaku was still a little disturbed by this turn of events, and upon further inspection, he surmised that this was _definitely_ a door-knob… a rusted, warped, metal doorknob, as innocuous as could be, just sitting there where the guy's liver should have been. It seemed like a wooden door was behind there, and Ikkaku almost wondered if the door was full-sized and that the man's body would swing open or something, or if the door was small… which would mean that they'd have to crawl through his guts.

Renji let out a harsh breath, sucking air through his fingers in short quick gasps. Ikkaku grabbed him and let him huddle his head under his armpit, not wanting him to have a full-blown nervous breakdown. It was bad enough that Renji was shy of people here, but to see him so distressed over this 'island' really was bugging Ikkaku.

"Just try and calm down, man," Ikkaku said soothingly, patting his head a little as he reached out with his other hand. The bodies weren't attracting insects at least; they were rotting of course, but they didn't have any maggots or bug eggs in them, which was a small blessing. Always look on the bright side. Ikkaku tried not to look as he reached his hand out through the dead man's corroded chest. Ugh, he couldn't make himself do it, which bothered him, because he wasn't _scared_. It was like some weird mind trick where he was trying to think of something but couldn't get the picture to work right in his mind.

Suddenly he noticed the mark on his hand… a bite-mark.

A few silent seconds passed as he stared at it, completely stunned. The dream he'd had in the apple tree... Had it been _real?_

He swallowed hard, trying to clear his mind, because if he didn't, he was going to do something rash. All of this was ridiculous. Just because the bite mark was there didn't mean anything, because he didn't know if _this_ dream was real either. It didn't mean anything. It was nothing. His conscience should just shut up.

Even as those thoughts ran through his head, his gut told him that that was a load of crap. Somehow Yumichika had sent him some little message, and he'd be stupid to write it off as nothing. Ikkaku needed to get out of here. Suddenly it felt as though he were trapped in a box or watching the seconds count down on his life.

"Kira, can you do it?" he asked sickly, slightly nauseous. He could see that Izuru's eyes were watering profusely even though he wasn't crying anymore. In fact, it didn't even seem like Izuru was aware that there was a veritable river pouring down his face. Kira shook his head though, seeming sickened by the island as well, although not to the degree that Renji was. Renji was starting to spasm, lifting each foot over and over in panic, horrified that the ground was really piles upon piles of corpses.

Ikkaku clapped a hand over Renji's eyes and tried to hold him still, considering carrying him on his back so he didn't have to touch the bodies anymore. Ikkaku was trying to cope with it by not focusing directly on any one corpse or just ignoring the sensation of the uneven ground, but it was getting harder all the time. He was starting to feel really sick. Yumichika was hanging onto his shirt for dear life, in danger of being flung off him at any moment. Since they'd just been standing there wasting time being freaked out when they could've been trying to get out of there, Rangiku pushed them out of the way.

"My bloodness, _move!"_ she said snarkily with a nasal sound to her voice. She was still plugging her nose and seemed even more unconcerned than before. "_I'll_ do it." She stuck her hand right in there through those ribs and the shriveled skin and rotted organs. She twisted the grimy door handle without a care, wrenching it aside because it seemed to have rusted shut. She just calmly wiped her hand off on her jean-dress after shoving the little door open. It seemed that they would indeed have to crawl through, and at that realization, Renji was practically on his knees, retching, nothing coming up.

"Come on, we're going through, okay? It looks like the bodies are gone on the other side," Ikkaku said in reassurance, ushering them all through the 'door', which was really just a hole through the guy's torso. Rangiku wormed her way through, taking care to keep her long hair bundled up so it would touch as little corpse-flesh as possible. Kira followed with a grimace and with tightly-shut eyes. Renji was practically crying as Ikkaku shoved him through.

"See? Not so bad," Ikkaku said, crawling through with some help from Izuru. He immediately noticed that they were in a cave, a _real_ cave, not just one made by dead bodies. It seemed like this island was really a huge rock that had an outer shell of corpses, or at least that was the only logical assumption Ikkaku could make. Maybe the tunnel went further underground, under the red lake and further on to wherever this crazy path was going to take them. Either way, this was a stone cave, with torches hung at intervals and with crooked little floor tiles that looked like a mosaic that had been covered and half-buried with dirt over the years. Immediately, Ikkaku began to feel trapped.

Fuck, the only time Ikkaku ever got claustrophobic was when it was stone walls like this, but he tried to work through it. It just seemed so hard to breathe right all of a sudden.

Renji was shaking all over and scratching like crazy, as if spiders were in his hair or crawling all over his body, but he seemed to be getting better now that they were away from that disgusting island.

"Ohhh, I know where we are," Rangiku said cheerily, unplugging her nose, even though the blood smell should've been really strong here still. Kira kicked the little door shut, spitting on the ground. It seemed that he'd thrown up in his mouth a little or something.

"Oh yeah?" Ikkaku queried, trying to peer down the tunnel to see if it let out anywhere in eyeshot. No such luck.

"We're at the Pull-Up Bar… I wonder how it got here, though," she mused. "It used to be out in the boonies… Maybe they relocated... but why would anyone want to relocate to _here?_" Ikkaku looked to Renji and pumped his arm once as if to ask whether it was a real pull-up bar. Renji shrugged, shuddering one last time before getting up. That wakizashi on his belt glinted in the fire-light, and Ikkaku was suddenly really grateful that Renji hadn't gone psychotic in his need to get away from those dead bodies.

"C'mon, you all love bars, don't you?" Rangiku asked cheerfully, making a mock-drinking motion like she was guzzling beer. Ikkaku was about to say that she was in no position to criticize his drinking habits, but then Izuru cut through it and confirmed his suspicions that this was another weirdly named building.

"Oh, a _bar_," Kira said with a little laugh, following Rangiku. Izuru almost seemed like himself now, actually, so Ikkaku just shrugged and followed them, Yumichika on his shoulder. He'd noticed that the little guy was quieter than usual.

As they went down the lit-tunnel, they noticed that thankfully, the ceiling and walls spread out to give them more room. Soon enough they could hear noise that could only be described as 'rowdy'.

Finally, they rounded a corner and could see a ramshackle house in the distance. Along the cave walls were different posters and signs, and one large one on the rundown porch of the pub said in large grimy letters: '_No scales, no service.'_

"Oh, shoot. They reinstated that stupid rule," Rangiku said with a snap of her fingers. They all stopped dead, standing there staring at the place, listening to all the racket coming from inside. Ikkaku wondered if Rangiku was serious.

"Drat," Yumichika agreed.

"Hm… Rangiku, you're a seamstress," Kira said as if he had an idea, "You could help."

Yumichika nodded like their plan was good, and Ikkaku just looked between them cluelessly, kind of incredulous. _Seriously?_ Why the hell would a person need scales to get into a bar? Ugh, he couldn't get away from these weirdos and the stupidness that constantly spewed from their mouths.

"Oh, I've got it! Maybe we can dress you up as a fish," Rangiku said enthusiastically, pulling something out from between her breasts, and Ikkaku had to wonder how she'd kept it in there so neatly. She spread it out in her hands and sized it on Ikkaku's body by holding it up to his chest. It was this sparkly-looking shirt that almost looked like it had been made of thousands of little sequins or pieces of broken glass. Each shone a different shade of blue, making it look startlingly similar to a fish's scales.

So he'd be walking into a bar wearing a glittery shirt. _That_ sure wouldn't attract attention.

Yumichika mumbled that Rangiku's shirt was actually a dress made of tears that she had never cried. Ikkaku bristled when he heard that it was a _dress._ He had nothing against girls or 'girly' shit, but he wasn't going to wear a dress into a _bar,_ for god's sake. That would be akin to suicide.

He didn't need their help with this. A bar? He was in his fucking element.

Ikkaku just waved them off and walked up to the building, shouldering his way inside even though they were freaking out and trying to drag him back. He figured that since they weren't here to buy beer, there wouldn't be a problem with him being inside without 'scales'.

Kira was chasing him and wringing his hands, starting to cry a little bit when a couple drunk guys jeered in their direction. That made Ikkaku stop, feeling a little guilty about Izuru crying, but apparently, Izuru's plan had been to slow him down long enough for Rangiku to nab him, and nab him she did.

"Gotcha!"

"AH!" Ikkaku yelled, half-suffocated and shoving at Rangiku's middle, trying to get her to release the death grip she had around his head. "I can't really breathe here, ow!"

"Oh my _blood_, Ikkaku, just put it on!" Rangiku shouted, letting him go, thrusting the tear-shirt at him. Ikkaku shook his head, waving his arms once to indicate that there was _no_ _way_ he was budging with this.

"I'm not gonna' wear that, I'd rather wrestle a shark!" Ikkaku shouted, not noticing that the bar had gone quiet. Izuru shook his head frantically, trying to shut him up.

"Oh yeah?" came a semi-familiar voice. Oh damnit.

Ikkaku turned around to see Muguruma standing with his arms crossed with a group of other men. They were near the door, standing around a hobo fire that was inside the house, oddly enough. They were drinking beer, rough-housing - although more quietly than before - and shoot, now they were blocking their exit. Kensei snapped his fingers and one of the guys walked over to a clear spot in the center of the room and pulled on a piece of rope, opening a trap door.

Now that everyone had quieted down, Ikkaku could hear the sound of rushing water, realizing that the house was situated over a river that ran through the cave.

"Why'd you say that out loud?" Yumichika hissed into his ear, moaning miserably. Ikkaku was baffled, looking to his friends, who didn't seem surprised by this. He still didn't see where this was going, but more than anything, Ikkaku was _happy_. He'd thought that he'd lost all control over the dreamscape, but it seemed that his words had just had a real effect on his real-time events.

But wait… "Seriously, _shark-wrestling?"_

"Yep!" Kensei shouted to him, gesturing down into the pit. Ikkaku took a step forward, leaning warily over the hole, keeping in mind that there could be some jerk lurking behind him, just waiting to kick him in the back and shove him down there.

Black waves that glinted slightly in the firelight were undisturbed for a moment. The water was opaque, revealing nothing, but after a moment of silence, the scariest fucking shark he'd ever seen _blasted_ out of the water and snapped its jaws.

"_Holy shit!" _he shouted, stumbling back, holding the front of his shirt. A bunch of the drunk guys laughed, shoving him a couple of times, but Ikkaku just punched them back, saying that he'd been surprised, not_ scared_.

"Get down there, man," Kensei urged, waving a hand towards the pit. "We have bets waiting!"

"... Okay, fine, I'll put on the shirt."

"Nope, it's too late. Now wrestle that thing!"

"Woah, woah, woah, we're not here to wrestle sharks," Rangiku said, shaking her head adamantly. "We're trying to get to Portside."

"Oh… Okay," Kensei said, sounding rather disappointed. Ikkaku kept his mouth shut, not wanting to screw things up further, knowing that this many drunk idiots could probably _make_ him go down there and swim with that thing if they really wanted to. "It's through there," Kensei said with a nod of his head, pointing to a door that was barely on its hinges.

"Thank you," Rangiku said sweetly, walking towards the door. Kira followed.

"C'mon Renj-" Ikkaku looked behind him. "Renji?" He turned in a circle, realizing that Renji was gone. "Wait guys, where's Renji?" he called to Rangiku and Kira. They looked back in confusion, and once they realized that they'd lost him, they all became quite upset.

"Hey, did you guys see a red-head come in here?"

"Besides me, obviously," Rangiku pointed out. Some of the men shook their heads. Ikkaku groaned and went back outside onto the broken-down porch.

"Hey, Renji?! Are you still here?" Ikkaku called, narrowing his eyes against the low light. After looking around for a minute, he saw Renji peeking out from behind a boulder in the distance, hiding. Seeing Ikkaku, Renji stuck his head up, knife in his teeth.

"C'mon," Ikkaku gestured hurriedly. Renji shook his head and huddled down, but once Ikkaku went to get him, he came along, head down like a kicked dog.

They wormed through the crowded bar quickly, following Rangiku to the back room, which was filled with trash cans and had dirty brick walls. It seemed to be empty, but after looking closer behind the garbage bins, Ikkaku saw an empty fireplace without any wood or ashes. Rangiku crawled straight through and they all followed after her, yet again.

When Ikkaku stood up and brushed himself off, he saw that they were in a generic hallway. After looking around for any more hidden details, Ikkaku realized he needed to keep up, because Rangiku just kept on walking.

Ikkaku watched as they went through each door, ending up in different places, all hallways or corridors that he'd seen throughout his lifetime. They went through the back room of their house, the empty streets of Seireitei, dormitory hallways, living-world alleyways, and as they went, they noticed more and more trash cans popping up all around them, all of them filled with what looked like shredded newspaper. When he looked at one that had been knocked over, Ikkaku swore he saw a hand sticking out.

They went upstairs and down, passing by wreckage and burned towns, their old rukon district, the pillar he'd failed to protect in fake Karakura town, and endless fence posts that held signs that repeatedly stated that '_trespassers will be jealous_'.

Eventually, the halls were so full of trash that it was impossible to see the walls enough to identify them, and after going through one last room - the 12th division's main lab - they landed themselves at the bottom of a stairway.

The stairs weren't normal, however. Ikkaku could only describe it as a ladder. They stood there at the bottom looking up through the huge jagged tube, trying to see how far it went up. Ikkaku shrugged and jumped, landing his feet on a few of the jutting bricks along the outside of the cylindrical rock-wall.

It was slow going, working around the inside of the wall, testing which footholds were reliable. Some were picture frames, pizza-boxes, textiles, but after a few minutes of climbing, the amalgamations of junk became so tightly compacted that it was nearly impossible to pick out individual items anymore. It started feeling like if he made a wrong move, he would really hurt himself, because the tube was getting tight, and things were jutting out all around him.

His muscles were starting to ache really badly, tensed up as he clung to every handhold he could find. As he reached for the next one, the rung of a ladder, he noticed a small sticker that looked like the one that the real Yachiru had in her hair.

After climbing another two steps, he noticed that he'd made it to a tan layer of junk. All of this stuff seemed to be color-coded. They'd passed a few shades of grey and navy so far. Hopefully they were almost there, wherever _there_ was. Speaking of, Ikkaku wasn't sure where they were supposed to come out, or even where he was ultimately supposed to be going on this journey. Sure, to Portside, but then what after that? What was the ultimate destination?

Was he going to be stuck here forever? What if the finish line didn't exist? Ikkaku shivered.

"Everyone okay down there?" he called. It didn't sound like anyone had fallen, but he just wanted to make sure.

"Yep!"

"Yeah!"

Renji couldn't answer of course, but Ikkaku thought he heard a sneeze.

"Are we almost at the top?" someone asked.

Ikkaku looked up and saw a stupid circular door that looked almost like a manhole with a doorknob on it. "Yeah, almost." After taking two more steps up, he tried to balance on one arm so he could open up the door, but before he could reach for the knob, the door was already being opened up by someone on the other side.

A tanned hand that seemed to belong to a young man stuck down through the hole and a voice came along with it, "Here lemme' help you." Ikkaku grabbed the guy's wrist and the guy did the same, hoisting him out of the pit onto a normal street.

"Thanks, man," Ikkaku said, taking a moment to catch his breath before looking up to see-

"_Hah!"_ Hisagi shouted, snatching Yumichika off his shoulder and running away like a crazy person. Yumichika gave Ikkaku this look that was remarkably unsurprised.

Ikkaku just sighed in exasperation, shouting after him, "Are you kidding me?" He helped pull Renji up through the hole, leaving him there to pull Kira and Rangiku out. Ikkaku was going to try to get back here quickly, because Renji looked a little panicked. They were in a nice looking town that had people all over, and even though it was peaceful, Renji was very shy of areas that were even vaguely populated. Ikkaku didn't want this to turn into a massacre.

Rushing through the crowd, Ikkaku was seriously shoving people out of the way, finally nabbing Hisagi by the back of his collar. Shuuhei choked and almost tripped, and Ikkaku tackled him down into the dirt, snatching Yumichika back out of his hand before he could be crushed under their bodies or by a passerby's foot. They started arguing and Shuuhei kept trying to grab Yumichika back. Ikkaku just dragged him by the ear back through the crowd, trying to find his friends again, griping to him the whole way back.

"-told you once, I've told you a thousand times, he's not yours, he's _mine_, and you can't have him, so stop it, already. You've gotta' quit fuckin' pulling this crap or I'm gonna' rip your face off and hang you from a tree by your belt loops until you-"

That was when they found Kira and Rangiku talking with Kyoraku-Taichou and…

"Oh, what a surprise. Such a pleasure to see you guys."

Ikkaku looked back at Ichimaru Gin in shock. He looked to Kira in confusion before asking, "What is _he_ doing here?" Yumichika was dragging a finger over his throat frantically to tell him to shut up, but Ikkaku still came out with, "I thought you were dead."

Gin blinked in confusion, eyes opening, before he looked down at himself in shock. All of a sudden, he just _disappeared._ Ikkaku fell back in surprise.

Izuru's eyes welled up immediately, and Rangiku just stood there, seeming to be stunned. After a few quiet moments, she looked around, saying softly, "Gin?"

After a few more seconds, she gave this little smile that really creeped Ikkaku out. Her arms started turning black and she bent over with a huge crack of her spine. It looked like a physical manifestation of pain had taken her over. Izuru was screaming his head off, so hard that blood was running down his chin.

"Run," Yumichika said hurriedly. Ikkaku got up, bewildered and sick in the pit of his stomach.

"What?"

"Run, _now!"_ Yumichika demanded, and out of the corner of Ikkaku's eye, he could see Rangiku rise up, a lot taller than she was normally, limbs elongating, and he thought he could see her head turning around much too far, _oh fuck._

The sky turned dark and chills went up his spine, feeling the nightmare take control of his dream-world. This hadn't happened since before he'd gotten trapped here, and he'd almost forgotten that this could happen. If he had a nightmare while he was still stuck here, they were doomed. He was going to die. That was it. Not needing to be told again, Ikkaku ran like hell, dodging people who had become faceless shades with red eyes.

Realizing that this was now his old rukon district, Ikkaku ran through the outskirts of town to the dark forest on the other side of the worst neighborhood.

After running for about three minutes, he looked back, slowing down, seeing that the dark was starting to fade. He cursed himself. Ikkaku had thought that he'd long since gotten used to the rules of his dream world, but he'd let his sentiment blind him. He'd wanted so badly to believe that the people here were somehow connected to his real friends, but that just wasn't true, and spending time with them was _dangerous_.

He had to get out of here.

Ikkaku sat down miserably at the foot of a tree, pouting, trying to clear his mind and block any negativity or scary thoughts that might flip things around again to 'nightmare mode'. Yumichika stayed quiet, letting him stew for a few minutes.

Suddenly, a leaf fell down on Ikkaku's head and he brushed it off, looking up. Up in the tree he could see a pair of hands clenched around a branch. Ikkaku stood up to investigate further, and saw that Renji was curled up in the tree, having fallen asleep there. His hair was standing up even more than usual, like a bottlebrush, like he was a cat that had been scared badly. His lower lip was red where he'd bitten it and there were scratch marks on his arms. Whether that was from doing it himself or from climbing the tree, Ikkaku didn't know.

"Hey," Ikkaku said, trying to reach up to him and nudge him awake. "Ah!" he shouted, stumbling back as Renji's wakizashi nearly went through his arm.

"Woah, man, what the hell!" Ikkaku shouted, pulling the knife out of the ground. That's right, he'd forgotten the rules. Do not corner Renji, do not surprise Renji, do not shout at Renji, and _never_ lower your guard around Renji.

Renji looked down at him, chest heaving, and after a few moments he slowly calmed down, seeing that it was just Ikkaku. Ikkaku tried to coax him down, but Renji wouldn't come, clinging to the tree like he thought Ikkaku was going to try to pull him out.

After what felt like ten minutes, Ikkaku finally got Renji to come down, promising that he didn't have to come through anymore populated areas with him, although Ikkaku didn't know what to do about that, because Yumichika had explained that Portside was a fishing village. Maybe Renji could find other ways to follow him without being seen.

Maybe it would be better this way, traveling by themselves. Having too many people with them wasn't a good idea. It would just be too many people to guard his back from. Yumichika mumbled that it was like old times, just the three of them, Senpai, Double-Senpai, and their red-head Kouhai… except that two of them weren't real.

Ugh, Ikkaku needed to get some sleep so badly, which he felt ridiculous thinking because he was _currently_ asleep. Maybe his dream body still needed rest, but all the same, it was probably still in the early afternoon here in his dream world. He had a long way to go still. There was no time to rest.

"Ya' know how ta' get ta' Portside?" Ikkaku asked wearily. Renji nodded, seeming more confident than before. "Good."


End file.
